Keith Lyons facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Keith Lyons
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| Born | 7 May 1952 Buckley, Wales
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| Died | 13 May 2020 (aged 68) Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
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Keith Lyons (born May 7, 1952 – died May 13, 2020) was a special kind of teacher and scientist. He focused on watching and understanding how athletes perform in sports. He even wrote the first book about using video to study sports.
In 1992, Keith Lyons started the Centre for Notational Analysis. This was at the Cardiff Institute of Higher Education in Wales. He moved to Australia in 2002. There, he helped start the Performance Analysis team at the Australian Institute of Sport. Later, in 2009, he became the first Director of Sport Studies at the University of Canberra. Keith Lyons also shared his ideas about teaching and coaching on his "Clyde Street" blog.
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About Keith Lyons
Keith Lyons was born in Buckley, Wales, on May 7, 1952. His parents were Donald and Joan Lyons. He had two siblings, John and Judith.
He went to several universities to study. These included the University of York and Loughborough College. He also studied at the London School of Economics and the University of Surrey.
Sports and Coaching
Keith Lyons loved playing rugby. He played for teams like Ruthin RFC and London Welsh RFC. He even played for North Wales. He competed against international teams from Tonga and Romania.
After playing, he became a coach. He coached rugby teams at St Mary's College and Exeter University. He also coached women's lacrosse. He was an assistant coach for the Welsh team at the 1997 Lacrosse World Cup in Japan. From 1998 to 2002, he was the national coach for whitewater slalom in Wales.
Keith Lyons also worked as a physical education teacher. He taught at Whitton Comprehensive School. Later, he became a lecturer at St. Mary's College.
He lived in Braidwood, New South Wales, Australia. He was a volunteer firefighter there. Keith was married to Sue, and they had two children, Beth and Sam. He passed away on May 13, 2020, in Canberra Hospital.
Analysing Sports Performance
Keith Lyons was very interested in how athletes, teachers, and coaches behave during sports. He wanted to find ways to watch and understand their actions.
Early Ideas
At Loughborough College, he learned new ways to think about sports. He learned about Rudolf Laban's ideas on movement. He also learned about "teaching games for understanding."
He met famous rugby coaches like Ray Williams. These experiences helped him develop his ideas about analysing sports. In 1978, he started writing down details of rugby games. This was called "notating" performance. He used this to coach the St Mary's College rugby team.
By 1980, he was teaching students how to analyse sports matches. He worked with Mike Murnane to use early video cameras. They recorded rugby games to study them later. They also helped coaches for women's hockey and lacrosse. In 1982, they recorded all games at the first Women's Lacrosse World Cup in Nottingham.
Keith Lyons wrote a book about using video in sports. His research helped people understand how to observe physical education classes.
Working with Sports Teams
Throughout the 1980s, Keith Lyons helped rugby teams by analysing their games. In 1991, he became the official analyst for the Welsh Rugby Union. He went with them to the 1991 Rugby World Cup.
A year later, he started the Centre for Notational Analysis. This centre helped sports organizations use real-time and slow-motion analysis. They worked with many teams, including the Welsh Rugby Union and the Football Association of Wales. They also helped the British Lions rugby team and the South African football team.
Keith Lyons was one of the first official performance analysts in world rugby. In 1997, the centre changed its name to the Centre for Performance Analysis. This showed their focus on how athletes perform in real situations.
In 2002, Keith Lyons moved to Australia. He became the first Coordinator of the Performance Analysis Unit at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS). Later, he became the Head of Biomechanics and Performance Analysis at the AIS.
He became a Professor of Sport Studies at the University of Canberra in 2009. He retired from the university in 2013. He helped many students with their research during this time.
From 2013 to 2017, he worked with top professional coaches in rugby and cricket. He helped them learn new ways to improve. He also helped paddling sports in Australia as a director and volunteer.
Sharing Knowledge
Keith Lyons believed in sharing information openly. In 2011, he wrote about how sports coaches could use "cloud computing." This means using online tools to store and share data.
He was one of the first to use social media to share his work. He wanted to make sure digital resources were well-organized and easy to find.
Fighting Apartheid
While at the University of York, Keith Lyons studied the politics of Southern Africa. He used his interest in sport to look at how South Africa's apartheid policy affected sports. Apartheid was a system of racial segregation.
His university paper was called "Sanctions against Apartheid Sport." He met important anti-apartheid leaders like Dennis Brutus. He learned about the Capricorn Africa Society's papers.
He joined groups like the South Africa non-racial Olympic Committee (SAN-ROC). He spoke out against apartheid as a rugby player. Because of this, he was not allowed to travel to South Africa. However, he was able to visit in 1995. He went as part of the Welsh rugby team for the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
