Newly established Tasmania Academy of Leadership and Sport set to provide students with hands-on experience in state’s top sporting organisations

Four of Tasmania’s top sporting organisations have partnered to launch a first of its kind program in Australia. See the details.

Grant Dreher CEO TasTAFE, Olympian Maddi Brooks, Kath McCann executive director Tasmania Football Club, Jesse O'Hara education program manager of Tasmania Academy of Leadership and Sport, Dominic Baker CEO Hobart Hurricanes, Mitch Coulson CEO Netball Tasmania, Christine Finnegan CEO Tasmania JackJumpers. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Young Tasmanian students aspiring to work in the sports industry will now have the best chance to do that on home soil thanks to a new partnership between the state’s top sporting bodies.

An initiative of the Tasmania Devils AFL club, the long awaited franchise has partnered with the Tasmania JackJumpers, Hobart Hurricanes and Netball Tasmania, along with TasTAFE, to form the Tasmania Academy of Leadership and Sport.

The program will provide Tasmanian-based students the chance to work within the four walls of each organisation with the aim of keeping the very best administrators, leaders and coaches in the state.

Jesse O'Hara education program manager of Tasmania Academy of Leadership and Sport, Olympian Maddi Brooks with Kath McCann Executive Director Tasmania Football Club. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

While similar programs are run interstate, many provide students with the chance to work at a sole organisation but this new program will allow participants the opportunity to get hands-on experience across all four codes and will begin in early 2025.

Program Manager Jesse O’Hara said having the collaboration from four of the state’s major sporting codes was key and was confident it would create a burgeoning local pipeline of talent.

“The real beauty of this program is it brings multiple top sport brands together into a single program so our students get exposure across the industry,” O’Hara said.

“We see this a strategic initiative for our industry to create a homegrown pipeline of talent to come into roles within our sports but we also see it as an initiative to lift the standard of education in Tasmania and use sport as a vehicle for success.”

TasTAFE CEO Grant Dreher believes the first of its kind program is one that’s only possible in Tasmania.

“Getting an integrated sports academy to work together in such a short period of time requires a lot of co-operation,” Dreher said.

“I’d probably say it wouldn’t be possible anywhere but in Tasmania and the way we co-operate and make things happen is part of the reason we’ve been able to be involved in this

“While there may be no quotas on employment (after the program), we will be privileging young Tasmanians to get into this academy and to be able to stay in Tasmania to study sport and have a career.”

The course will provide up to a year’s credit into select bachelor’s degree and currently doesn’t have a cap on the amount of students that can be apart of the program.

It will be run in Hobart next year with plans to expand to the North and North-West in 2026 with students to juggle two-days of coursework with around 100 hours of work placement across the organisations.