Alessandro Tosim, a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Physical Education (FEF) at Unicamp, was elected for the third time as the best coach of the year in the “Collective Sports” category by the Brazilian Paralympic Committee (CPB). Tosim is coach of the Brazilian Men's Goalball Team, a sport specifically aimed at visually impaired people. The awards ceremony took place on December 12th, at the Paralympic Training Center, in São Paulo.
For Tosim, the award is an important recognition of his work, but also of the performance of the Brazilian team, which is currently one of the biggest forces in the world in goalball. “Thanks to the work we have done over the last few years, we have achieved very important achievements. Only Brazil and Lithuania currently hold the second world championship in the sport”, he explains.
Brazil's excellent performance in goalball, according to the FEF-Unicamp doctoral student, is due to the work of a multidisciplinary technical committee, which seeks to offer athletes the best conditions to practice the sport at a high level. “But we cannot forget that Brazil also has great sporting talents who are at the top of the world, which makes our work easier”, he considers.
Currently, Tosim divides his routine between coaching the Men's Goalball Team, teaching at a university center in the interior of São Paulo and pursuing his doctorate at FEF-Unicamp. The theme of his research, which is guided by professor Paulo César Montagner, is the “Formative Analysis of Paralympic coaches: A study with goalball coaches”.
A resident of Jundiaí, 40 kilometers from Campinas, Tosim is currently on vacation. But he is already thinking about the team's schedule for 2019. “In March, we will begin the first phase of training with a view to the Parapan American Games, which will be played in Lima, Peru. We have a lot of work ahead of us, as we will have very difficult opponents to beat, such as the United States and Canada,” he says. Outside the Americas, according to him, the teams from Lithuania, China, Japan, Germany, Belgium and Iran are also considered powers.
