This original piece of YST research seeks to understand what young people themselves want from their journey as a school and community sports leader. This is a timely question considering sport and subsequent leadership opportunities have been severely affected by COVID-19, accentuated by the closure of schools. Social distancing measures, year group bubbles, restrictions on mass participation events etc all pose challenges to the roll out of leadership opportunities for an unknown length of time.

About the Research
It was imperative to hear from young people themselves for this research. To produce this report, the following was completed:

• Youth Sport Trust’s Leadership, Coaching and Volunteer (LCV) and Inclusion Lead School networks were invited to host focus groups with their students to hear their thoughts on forthcoming leadership opportunities.
• YST staff also held a focus group with YST Team Leaders in July 2020.
• Recordings and/or notes from these focus groups were sent to YST’s R&I Team, and the findings were analysed and thematised into the themes which are the subheadings in the Main Findings section of this report.

In total, over 45 young people aged from 12-25 were consulted during the research process