The sporting year ahead promises to be one of unmatched significance for the Central Coast Academy of Sport and for the sport sector of our region. The Central Coast Academy of Sport now entering its sixteenth year of operation is gearing up for what promises to be a year of unparalleled success.
It is again expected new sport programs will hit the market in 2019, an emphasis on coach attraction and development, sport sector collaboration, renewed commercial support, anticipated excellence by CCAS athletes at the Your Local Club Academy Games in April will all be headline acts in 2019. The top of this list must surely be about the quality of the Central Coast Academy of Sport coaches, the life blood of the organisation, volunteers who conservatively contributed approx. $250,000+ in real value to the sector in 2018. Over 6,000 hours of volunteer time was provided in 2018 and this number is expected to grow in 2019.
The Central Coast Academy of Sport is blessed to have some of the best coaches available for our up and coming athletes, Mitch Ede, Simon Berry, Alison Parkin (AFL), Larry Spencer, Matt Horsnell, Neil Hinton, Lenore Beaton, Kerry Smith (Athletics), Will Granger, Tim Hudson, John Gunderson, Jacinta Govind (Basketball), Peter Cliff (Golf), Brett Johnson, Mark McDermott, Michael Tweedie (Hockey), Jess Morgan, Casey Judge (Netball), Graeme Carroll, Stephen Critoph (Swimming), Dave Brooker (Tenpin Bowling), Mark Tipple, Cody Frost (Touch Football) and Robyn Low-Hart (Triathlon). These are some of the most successful coaches in their chosen fields and the athletes of our region are certainly in good hands.
April 12-14 will see the staging of the annual Your Local Club Academy Games, the multi-sport festival will be held at multiple venues across the Hunter region. Preliminary plans indicate more than 1,400 athletes will converge on the Hunter to contest the games across eight sporting disciplines. The Your Local Club Academy Games is a key sporting event for the Central Coast athletes and the Central Coast Academy of Sport will be looking to build on the highly impressive results achieved in 2018.
These performance measures mean the Central Coast Academy of Sport will deliver even more sporting significance for a region, a region that does so very well in sport at all levels. In addition to these exciting focus areas, the Central Coast Academy of Sport will take a very active role with the roll out of a new sport collaboration entity, Sport Central Coast. Sport Central Coast will start to gain traction early in 2019. This new group is charged with responsibility of assisting in the delivery of the outcomes sought from the recently approved Sport and Active Recreation Plan 2018-2023.
Ian Robilliard, the CCAS Managing Director and a Director of Sport Central Coast said of the pending commencement of Sport Central Coast: “The Sport and Active Recreation Plan has received some preliminary commentary, the key to the success or failure of this new entity is the need to capitalise on the unique advantages of our region. We belong to one local government area, a region that is supported by four key population centres, we are well connected to Sydney and Newcastle, we have kilometres of ocean shores, rivers, lakes and estuaries, the growth corridors at both ends of the region provide exciting opportunities, these advantages are somewhat unique, not seen in other regions and it is the role of Sport Central Coast to capitalise on these local advantages to build sport for our region. I often talk about the ABCD of sport, which simply means Always Be Connecting the
Dots, surely this must be the role of an effective collaboration group. It is exciting, but it also means we must engage as fully as we can across the sector, effective engagement is a two-way process, and this will ensure Sport Central Coast has a greater chance of success”.
The stated vision within the Sport and Active Recreation Plan for the region as developed in a planning day back in 2017 is; ‘Lead a collaborative approach that enables inclusive participation in sport and active recreation for the Central Coast community that is accessible, affordable and sustainable’.
