USC gives aspiring Olympians a sporting chance
A Talent Assessment Centre has been established at the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) to give aspiring Olympians a sporting chance of representing Australia at an elite level.
The University has joined forces with the Australian Sports Commission’s National Talent Identification and Development (NTID) program to offer more young people the opportunity to participate in talent identification screening.
The program is designed to find and develop new athletes and to transfer existing athletes between sports to possibly represent Australia at the 2012 London Olympics and beyond.
The NTID centre at USC will be one of more than 20 established across Australia which will conduct testing to help fast-track talented athletes into selected Olympic Games and World Championship sports.
Australian Sports Commission’s Director for Sport Performance and Development Greg Nance said the talent identification program aimed to increase the number of test results received and improve talent detection opportunities.
The NTID centre will assist in validating athletes' physical performance results generated from a revolutionary web-based self-identification tool called eTID.
This allows athletes to enter their own results for a set of predetermined physical screening tests online and then be provided with feedback on their results. Anyone who demonstrates above-average potential in the online tests might be invited to participate in the NTID program.
USC’s Laboratory Coordinator for Sport and Exercise Science Meegan Walker said the University would initially hold four testing days a year, with the first planned for Saturday 20 September.
Ms Walker said the establishment of the centre was a feather in the cap for USC and was good news for talented athletes in the region.
“A lot of Australia’s sporting talent lives in regional areas,” she said. “This centre at USC allows those athletes who clearly excel to get noticed on a national level.
“It is also wonderful recognition from the ASC for the standard of testing that the University offers, and that’s recognition for our staff as well as for our facilities.”
All aspiring athletes are encouraged to log onto eTID to see if they have the potential to be Australia’s next sporting champion.
— Terry Walsh