Olympic boxing gold medallist Shelley Watts fronted a world class team-up of Australian athletes visiting Moree last week to encourage local secondary school girls to get out and get active.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Watts was joined by Aussie sports stars Kate Jenner, Taleena Simon and Angela Mullins hosting sporting clinics and motivational classes in their respective disciplines, addressing the significant drop-out rate for girls taking up sport after primary school.
Moree PCYC’s Andrew Ryan helped coordinate the event that included girls from Warialda and Moree secondary schools and said the clinics and training sessions were about encouraging girls to get out and have a go.
“There is a big drop out in high school students for females—they stop doing sports,” he said.
“So it was basically get some high profile athletes here to motivate the students to just join a team and get involved and you never know what might happen—you might go all the way.”
Mr Ryan dubbed the event a great success, offering local girls the opportunity to glean life lessons from women at the top of their respective, often typically male-dominated fields.
“I think young people need as much encouragement as they can get and they need that support,” he said.
He said each workshop was unique and offered the girls a good look at each sport, but centred on drawing strength from within.
“They were speaking to each athlete and each athlete said in parts of their life things change, but it all came back to (was) they got their strengths from themselves,” he said.
“That was the turning point in their career, they looked within themselves and said ‘I’m the only one who can do it and I’m the only one who is going to do it’.”
“I thought it was a great day in that aspect because it just got all the girls out there and got them active. With all the different stations and the different development officers and the different sportspeople who came along, hopefully it may just flick a switch for some of the girls and they’ll say ‘I’ll give that a go’.”
Professional experience from the nation’s female sporting royalty was
coupled with workshops run by home-grown athletes, sharing their experience.
“We had our own Angela Walker. She told her story about swimming and the ups and downs about swimming. She was quite good,” Andrew said.
Minor misfortune made way for local girls to learn from one of their own when Aussie basketball player Rohanee Cox was unable to attend, allowing local student Grayson Taylor to step in and run on-court workshops for her fellow students.
“It was good to see the girls getting in amongst that,” Andrew said.
Mayor Katrina Humphries weighed in on the gala day, coordinated by Moree Plains Shire Council, Womensports NSW and the local PCYC, and said it was important that local girls have active role models.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for our local girls to get active, learn new skills and to be inspired by these outstanding female role models,” she said.