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USC helps netballers shoot for glory
As Australia’s gold medal favourite netballers head to Delhi for the Commonwealth Games, a new crop of potential stars is emerging this week at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
About 130 regional representative netballers aged between 12 and 18 are stretching, sprinting and shooting for glory over three days at the Sippy Downs campus.
Their efforts are under the watchful eye of a USC team led by USC Sport and Exercise Science Laboratories Coordinator Ava Kerr as part of the Electronic Talent Identification (eTID) program.
The University is an accredited talent assessment centre for the Australian Sports Commission and was approached by Sunshine Coast Netball Association to conduct the testing for physical features, fitness and skill levels.
Under eTID, test results for athletes aged 12 to 29 can be accessed online by scouts for elite national programs in a variety of sports.
“For example, a coach holding a netball development camp could look up the results to find a 15-year-old female who’s tall and can jump high,” Ms Kerr said.
She said USC Sport and Exercise Science students also benefited. “They’re putting theory into practice by conducting quality, national-level assessments.
“This is the calibre of testing involved in coaching elite teams or working for an academy of sport and these are real, junior athletes – not classmates in laboratories. You can’t beat that for workplace learning.”
Third-year USC student Sine McGregor, who was measuring the arm span of 12-year-old Mountain Creek Primary School student Ellen Stanton, said she was learning a lot about testing and talent identification.
– Julie Gatehouse