FORMER professional hockey player Alex El-Shamy has launched a venture designed to get more kids into sport.
El-Shamy - who runs her own management consultancy, is a commercial specialist for the Newcastle Jets and was most recently general manager (commercial and marketing) of the Paralympics - has founded SportStarters.
Kicking off with clinics in the approaching school holidays, it is open to children aged between five and eight. Each clinic will give kids a chance to explore different sports, build their confidence and ideally choose a sport to participate in more regularly.
"This is a passion project for me ... but the growth plan is looking to build more holiday camps beyond the Hunter, and also the bigger picture is looking to build after-school clinics," she says.
El-Shamy started playing hockey at six, represented NSW from the age of 14 to opens (national hockey league), has coached junior representative teams and has run the hockey program at Hunter Academy of Sport.
Since studying sports journalism at university, sport has been central to her career, including her current role with the Jets: "I've always worked in sports business, trying to get more money so we can play more," she says.
El-Shamy was moved to launch SportStarters in the wake of the pandemic, which drained participation numbers from community sports.
"Post COVID there was lots of talk around numbers having called away in sport in general across the board so it reinforced to me that not only did we have a problem pre-COVID in not getting more kids through the sporting funnel, one of the biggest problems is that volunteer sports administrators have a huge job just getting club competitions to actually run - we have far fewer volunteers than we did 20 years ago," she says.
While professional codes such as AFL run programs to introduce to their sports, other grassroots sports like hockey and netball are neglected, she says.
"We aren't getting kid to try enough sports and we are certainly not getting kids who may not be as into sport involved ...They go to one thing, may not like it and that's the end of that," she says.
Adding to the problem, she says, is the financial expense for parents who might spend $200 to get their child registered in a sport, only to have them not enjoy it and quit early.
SportStarters clinics will be taught by qualified staff and run at the International Hockey Centre in the school holidays. They will be broken into three sessions - hockey, football and a "hand ball" sport such as netball, touch football or basketball.
"In between sessions we have team activities. So we are really encouraging team sport, the benefit of being part of a team, trusting your team mates and enjoying that interaction with team mates," she says.
The clinics are designed to build confidence in kids, and perhaps discover what they want to do more of.
In addition, she will give parents information about what options their are for kids to continue in the sport they like, acting as a connecting point to local clubs.
The clinics cost $100 and run for seven hours, including lunch and a participant's pack, and the use of equipment.
"I hope parents come away feeling their child has had a good health experience and that they have been presented with a few options, that they're interacting with different children that they don't do all the time and Ithink that's a great benefit of sport - if they have trouble at school with a friendship group they can go to sport and have a separate friendship sports," she says.
El-Shamy loves the side benefits of sport.
"People who play sport are more resilient, they can cope with things better they approach life in a more positive way and I look around and think of friends I have and still socialise with," she says.
"If we can all do a bit more to get kids participating more in things that are healthy for them, be it sport or whatever, that makes them healthier and happier, then that's good. "
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