Rowing Australia Annual Report 2009-2010 - Australian Sports

Athletes’ Commission Report
Rowing Australia is constantly striving to provide
forums for athlete feedback and input via its annual
post competition survey to athletes in Junior, U23
and Senior A, through the Athletes Commission and
team leaders. Initiatives such as the Selection Policy
Forum, held in Melbourne, October 2009, were
excellent formats for such athlete involvement and
feedback, and were attended by Sarah Tait, Kim Crow,
Marty Rabjohns and myself, representing the interests
of athletes on the current selection process. “It was
a very beneficial process and I think some positive
changes were made”, commented Kim Crow,
Women’s Team Leader 2009.
Kim Crow and David Crawshay attended the
Australian Athletes’ Alliance conference (players’
associations from AFL, Rugby league, football, rugby
union and netball in September 2010). Such initiatives
provided further opportunity for both 2009 team
leaders to learn from professional sports.
Over a year ago each State agreed to adopt Rowing
Australia’s Athlete Commission model to better
support athletes at a local level throughout the
domestic season and to increase the ‘touch-points’
for athletes with an RA Athlete Commission
representative to provide valuable feedback and
support. Disappointingly, not all states have
implemented this program—for those states that have,
it is yet to be determined if it has been a successful
initiative.
As this has not been as successful as hoped I have yet
again, with Board approval I might add, sought to
change our AC structure to better support our most
important asset, the athlete, build leadership skills
amongst our athletes and improve ‘touch points’
for athletes so they feel they have some one to talk
to and share any challenges or issues in times of
need. Building on the success on the Senior A team
leadership structure, headed this year by elected
women’s captain, Sarah Tait and Men’s captain
Dan Noonan, the U23 and Junior teams elected a
representative from each crew to create a leadership
group. The following captains were elected by their
peers:
Senior A Leaders
Sarah Tait, Women’s Team Captain
Dan Noonan, Men’s Team Captain
U23
Adam Wertheimer, MB8+
Will Lockwood, MB4-
Sasha Belonogoff, WB4x
Timothy Widdicombe, MBL4-
Edward de Carvalho, MBL2x
Jessica Molsher-Jones, WB4-
Georgia Baker, WB4x
Alexandra Hayes, WBL4x
Junior
Matthew Cochran, MJ4+
Michael Bernerius, MJ4-
Thomas Sacre, MJ4x
Hannah Vermeersch, J4-
Eleanor Wilson, WJ4x
Jessica Hall, JW2x
Such a structure for touring athletes permitted:
Fair representation
Good team cohesion
Regular (daily) empowerment of leadership skills
through regular team meetings
Scope for the leadership group to develop with
guidance
To ensure we have a leadership group with greater
continuity of ideas and a better representation of the
whole team we are planning for each leadership group
(U23 and Junior) to elect a men and women’s captain
and one representative from the Adaptive Squad. This
group would then join the Athletes Commission for one
year.
I hope in a year’s time to be reporting greater successes
regarding our endeavours to support our champions—
our athletes. If we fail them, then we fail ourselves.
Rebecca Joyce
Athletes Commission Chair
Rowing Australia Annual Report 2009–2010
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