New Sport SA CEO Leah Cassidy wants sporting clubs to help run school sport programs to give kids more opportunities
SCHOOL sports should be run by clubs or peak sporting bodies, rather than time-poor teachers who may not have the right skills, suggests the state’s new sports boss.
SCHOOL sport should be run by local clubs or peak bodies, rather than time-poor teachers who may not have the right skills, South Australia’s new sports boss has declared.
In coming months, new Sport SA chief executive Leah Cassidy says she plans to put a series of proposals to ministers responsible for sport, education, child protection and human services.
She will also highlight access to sporting activities – in terms of facilities and cost – and the influence of gambling and alcohol advertising in sport as key issues for the State Government to consider.
“We constantly hear that teachers are so busy and there’s a crowded curriculum. Let us help,” she told The Advertiser.
“Sporting clubs and associations could play a much larger role in school sport. It used to happen … over the last five to 10 years, that has fallen off.
“Are kids getting the best coaching and grounding in that sport anyway if it’s being delivered by teachers?”
Ms Cassidy, who started in the role on Monday, previously held senior roles in the education and child protection departments.
She also wants more focus on children under state care being involved in sport to steer them in the right direction.
Ms Cassidy, who has also worked in Tasmania, Hong Kong and Turkey, wants to bring more variety to school sports, which she said had “become very much about the more popular sports – footy, cricket, netball, soccer, tennis”.
“It’s not about lacrosse, bowls, BMX riding, tenpin bowling. We don’t have the diversity in the sports. When we think about our refugee population in Australia … there are opportunities to offer the less traditional sports which, for some of those migrants, might be more familiar to them.”
Ms Cassidy said “sport must be part of the solution” to engaging children in state care.
“Systematically, we haven’t done it as well as we could,” she said. “What role can sport play more broadly in getting (young people) into a structured environment, a culture of team work, of looking after your mates?”
Ms Cassidy gave an example of a boy, 17, placed with a foster family whom she knew and described as “a sporting family”. “He is playing volleyball,” she said. “He now has the potential to go into an elite pathway.”
The influence of gambling and alcohol advertising or sponsorship in sport should also be examined, “much like the debates of the late ’80s and early ’90s that led to the phasing out of tobacco sponsorship”.
Sport SA was set up in 1991. The peak body for sport in SA represents more than 155 state sporting associations, clubs and sport businesses.
It delivers advocacy and lobbys on behalf of the sport industry, including training.