2025-26 Elite Dual Career Athlete Pathway – Meet the Scholars
Now that the new academic year is well and truly underway, we are delighted to announce and introduce this year’s Elite Dual Career Athlete Pathway scholars!
The EDCAP scholarship supports the highest-performing student-athletes at the University of Birmingham, providing them with bespoke access to expert practitioners and specialist support services.
As a whole, the EDCAP aims to support the development and success of world-class athletes, whilst enabling them to find and manage the optimum balance between sport and study during their time at UoB, so that they can succeed in both areas rather than sacrificing one for the other.
The 2025-26 EDCAP programme features a number of high-achieving returners and also welcomes some exciting new talent, all of whom we cannot wait to support and work alongside over the next 12 months!
EDCAP Elite
The EDCAP Elite is the highest tier of support and funding a student-athlete at UoB can receive, on the basis of their performances and achievements to date.
17 athletes across six sports make up this year’s EDCAP Elite programme, with three that have made the jump up from the EDCAP Talent tier following their exceptional performances during the 2024-25 year and a further five brand new to the programme(*).
The EDCAP Elite features two post-graduate students, with the remaining 15 spread across 12 undergraduate programmes, ranging from Biological Sciences and Maths, to Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences and Medicine.
Athletics – Abbie Ives, Abi Pawlett(*), Jake Minshull, Jess Bailey
Hockey – Alice Atkinson, Ben Wall(*), Betsan Thomas, Caitlin Witham(*), Caspar Lea, Harvey Edwards, Lottie Bingham, Tilly Woodhead(*)
Judo – Ben Levy(*), Summer Shaw
Para Powerlifting – Ali Jawad(*)
Rowing – Katie Mole
Squash – Hana Ismail
EDCAP Talent
The EDCAP Talent sits directly below the EDCAP Elite tier and aims to provide specialist support to help – largely junior – athletes make the next steps upwards in their sporting career.
This year, the Talent tier is made up of 15 athletes across eight sports and 13 academic courses, ranging from Dentistry and Law, to International Relations and History. We are excited to be welcoming 11 incoming first year and four returning UoB student-athletes(*) to the programme.
Athletics – Fabian Powell, Eleanor Strevens(*)
Badminton – Lucy Brierley
Cricket – Amuruthaa Surenkumar, Megan Austin(*)
Hockey – Alex Erlam(*)
Judo – Nicole Wood, Lola Hodson, Charlie Ayre
Netball – Ané De Wet, Ffion Evans, Evelyn McCagherty(*)
Squash – Ellie Breach
Swimming – Izzy Okaro
Graduate EDCAP
This year’s Graduate EDCAP programme is made up of 7 of the University’s highest-performing, recently-graduated athletes that have benefitted from sport scholarship input previously, and have since decided to remain in the area following graduation to continue accessing this exceptional level of performance support.
We are incredibly proud to retain and continue supporting the development and success of the following world-class athletes, including an astounding 4 Paris 2024 Para/Olympians(*), 2 European medallists and a top-60 world-ranked professional squash player.
Athletics – Didi Okoh(*), Hannah Kelly(*), Isabelle Boffey, Will Barnicoat
Hockey – Hannah Pearce(*)
Swimming – Ollie Morgan(*)
Squash – Sanjay Jeeva
Stay tuned to hear more about what the above athletes get up to over the coming months, and feel free to follow along on our socials @uobperformancesport.
