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Fortune favours the Spark
The 36 athletes and 13 staff of the inaugural
Australian Spark today joined forces with the athletes’ personal
coaches, family and friends for the official team lunch ahead of
the start of the 13th IAAF world junior championships in Moncton
(CAN) on Monday.
Since arriving in the far-eastern Canadian town on Wednesday night
the team has settled into its digs at the University of Moncton,
visited the championships track and got down to business with
training on the track, in the gym and at the pool.
At today’s official team lunch, traditionally held a number of days
before the commencement of competition, team leader Sara
Mulkearns addressed the team and its supporters as the
countdown to the 2010 world junior championships enters its final
days.
“It’s my pleasure to be the team leader of this Australian junior
team. The terrific group we have before us is really well-supported
financially by the Australian Sports Commission, the Australian
Commonwealth Games Association, Asics, 2XU and Athletics
International, so a big thankyou to all our partners.
"We started this journey back in October, 2009 when we started
with our world junior shadow squad. It was something we hadn’t done
for a couple of years but we thought we’d open up the door of
communications and hopefully get everybody talking, our personal
coaches talking with our national youth event coaches and our
athletes communicating with us so we could track the athletes
better. I think overall the learning and development that went on
would have to be put down as a success.
“In March in Sydney we had a fantastic junior national
championships and the talent that’s among us here all came from
that meet so that was a big part of selection for this team. Three
or four weeks ago we went to Brisbane and ran a competition and
education camp and it was there we got to know everybody in the
group and it was also there that I put out the phrase, ‘fortune
favours the brave’ and I challenged the group to be brave in their
preparation for the world junior championships.
“When I say brave I don’t mean getting out on the track and being
the biggest and the strongest, I mean being brave in doing the
right things for their preparation, being able to make the right
decisions that are going to impact on their journey – decisions
like going to bed on time, not getting sunburnt, looking after
yourself, not getting distracted, not staying up all night – and I
think we have a bunch of athletes in front of us who are being
brave and making the right decisions for themselves.
“It’s a really big honour to represent Australia, a really huge
honour. Being on the world stage is not like being at the All
Schools, it’s not like being at junior nationals. For those who
have been on the world stage before, it’s a massive step up and
we’re all here to be proud of you and support you and stand behind
you but make no mistake, it’s us against the world. There are 170
countries competing in Moncton and that’s a big gig; probably 50 of
them won’t challenge us but with the rest, there’ll be a lot of
talent there and we’ve got some athletes who are young and this is
their first international experience. We’ve got a couple who are
15, 16-year-old athletes amongst us right up to 19-year-olds, so we
can see the development in that group going forward. Some of the
athletes are age-eligible for 2011 world youths next year and 2012
world juniors the following year so there’s lots of learning to be
done here and hopefully some good development as well.
“When we look across previous championships we
know that not everybody in this room is going to have the
championships of their lives, we sit here now and we all think with
great anticipation and great hope and we all think, ‘this is going
to be my best time or my best performance’ but the reality is it’s
not going to be the best performance for everyone, but what I
challenge you with is that it’s what you do post the world juniors
with your results that’s really important.
“We’re hoping for lots of top-eight and top-12 performances but if
that’s not what happens for you as an athlete, don’t let it defeat
you – take it on and build from there. If you talk to any senior
athlete or athlete of our past, they’ll all say you have some crap
championships and then you just work ahead and you go on again so
what’s really important is how you as athletes bounce back from
these championships.
“Some of you will do really well – will you get a little bit ahead
of yourselves and think you’re better than everybody else and
forget to do all that underlying hard work that got you to where
you are today? Some of you won’t go as well and again, will you
take on the challenge and say, ‘I’m going to get back into it and
have another crack at it’?. That’s something that’s got to come
from you athletes; as parents, coaches and administrators we can’t
do anything about that, it’s got to come from within.
“We hope that for all of you, this is not your Olympics; this can’t
be your one go at representing Australia. This has to be just
whetting your appetite to make it in the senior team. Hopefully I
can look across and see 36 athletes in their Spark t-shirts that
are aspiring to make the senior Australian team and that’s what’s
really important. My work and the work Athletics Australia has put
in for the last five years to our junior program is not about our
best juniors in the world, it’s about how we get our best talent
into our senior teams.
"Junior programs are fantastic, it’s fantastic if you can get
some good results here but the big thing is to transition to the
senior team. We have one athlete here who is going to represent
Australia at the Commonwealth Games in Julian
Wruck and we might have one or two more that pop up after
these results and we wish Julian all the best, it’s a fantastic
effort as a young man so well done Julian.
“Behind these great athletes we have an amazing staff. You’d be
amazed at how much work they’ve done before we even got on the
plane to come to Canada, talking to personal coaches, planning
programs, talking to parents, talking to athletes, going to watch
them train and compete, looking at video analysis, all this happens
with our event coaches before the trip begins.
“Our medical staff are on the phone checking
up, getting scans, it’s endless. From a management point of view,
Leanne (Smith),
Jodi (Lambert) and myself have
been doing so many timetables, checking buses and planes, the list
goes on. The staff work so many hours before they even get on the
plane but the real work starts once they get here. Days can start
at 5am and they can finish post-midnight so a big thankyou to the
staff.
“The Australian senior team was last year named the Australian
Flame and so we wanted to get a junior team name and last year’s
Under 19 squad did a bit of a workshop around it and came up with
the Spark. These athletes here are our future Flame members and we
really hope they take on this opportunity, learn as much as they
can about themselves as people and as athletes and are able to take
that next step. It’s good to be an Australian Spark but what we
really want you to be are athletes of the Australian Flame. We’ve
got one doing it in October and hopefully in the next few years
we’ll get a couple more.
“I’d like to wish you all the very best
athletes, it’s a big gig in front of you but you’re all up to it,
you wouldn’t have been selected if you weren’t up to it. It’s us
against the world so let’s show the world what we’re made
of.”
Sara Mulkearns
Team leader
To view photos from today's official team
lunch, click
here.
Photo courtesy of Jodi Lambert
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