Sport Development Leader

It has been a month of celebration with so many wonderful achievements recognised from our own sports such as hockey and AFL, as well as sporting achievement outside the school gates including gymnastics, ballet, and water polo.  

One thing that resonates with all the achievements is patience and determination.  Sport is not something that comes naturally to many of us, in fact very few are born with the natural skill we all hear of.

Behind every achievement lies a bed of determination, hard work, failures, resilience, and most of all dreams.  The saying of "hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard" could not be more truthful.  

Another statistic to note is that many of the sportswomen receiving academic awards are also recieving sporting awards. How can it be? They are participating in sport all year yet receiving excellent grades? They talk of scheduling time for both physical activity and academic activity, each one balancing the other out.  Like the research tell us, our brains work better when there is a balance of stress. It allows that downtime and a chance to socialise and feel empowered.  We always need to keep an open mind to sport and exercise and what drives us to stay involved when the pressure comes on.   

An interesting study I am reading on teenage involvement in sport talks a lot about barriers to staying involved, study or work, not having friends into the same activities or competitive sport vs social sport.  I would like to think we have a good handle on this here at the College and we have made changes over the last few years to include social sports as well as selecting year level based teams where possible to ensure friendship groups can play together.  We still retain competitive Open grade teams where the drive and culture is performing at the teams best, but more and more we see students coming back year on year to play with friends, keeping each other enrolled in sport and hopefully becoming lifelong participants in a lifestyle that is healthy and rewarding. 

As the school year draws to an end, I challenge you to ask yourself, what could I do in 2022 to challenge myself physically, what friends can I take on this journey and how can I plan to make this all fit in with my schooling? As parents we know too well that time and opportunity fly by quickly. I challenge you also to have the conversation and encourage your child to take up the sporting opportunity’s and just have a go, no one is judging you on having fun, come and join the team!