It was wet and windy at Mineral Resources Park but that did not deter the attendance and enthusiasm of 44 girls aged between 11 and 18 who took part in the first Women's Next Generation Academy session.
Guided by current stars of the AFLW, the youngsters were put through their paces with a series of drills before leading into a full ground match-sim to finish off.
Eagles players Belinda Smith, Courtney Rowley, Emily Elkington, Jess Sedunary, Krstel Petrevski, Lauren Wakfer and Mikayla Western gave the young girls a potential look into their future if they continued with the NGAW program.
AFLW Recruiting Manager and Academies Coordinator Chad Morrison was thrilled with the first session and said its success was a reward for the hard work put in across the Community and Game Development team in getting the program going.
“There’s been quite a bit of planning over the last few months to get this up and running and it’s a really great opportunity for these girls in our zones to come together and progress their football and get coached by some great AFLW players,” he said.
“It’s vitally important for the female pathway to have role models and for the AFLW girls to commit and show dedication to want to help these younger girls is amazing.”
Eagles’ AFLW player and Women’s and Girls’ Academy coach Jess Sedunary said it was a fantastic opportunity for her and her teammates to engage with the young female players as they begin their football development pathway.
“We all wanted to be role models for the girls and help teach them things we’ve learnt through our own football journeys,” she said.
“Football programs like this weren’t available when we were their age so to see the number of girls down tonight in the wet and enthusiastic as ever, just shows the potential in programs like this for young up-and-coming female players.”
Morrison gave high praise for the young participants and AFLW player coaches for braving the weather and looks forward to seeing the growth within the program in the future.
“Considering it was our first session and the weather conditions, to have 44 girls show up out of the 80 girls already in our database was a great turn out.”
“We’re only just scratching the surface; over the next 12 months we believe we can double that and also feed in from our regional staff to have a healthy and successful NGAW program moving forward.”
“For the rest of this year we’re wanting to do monthly training sessions for all ages to come together. We’re also wanting to do a curtain raiser at one of the AFLW games so it’s a really good incentive for all these girls in our regions to progress into an even bigger 2024 for our NGAW.”
“The end product is to get some concessions and get these girls into our AFLW team in the future, but also to run a successful program that is really inclusive for Indigenous and Multicultural girls and brings the community within our zones together.”
Thanks to the support of our community partner BHP, we are able to continue to run our Female Next Generation Academy through 2023 and we look forward to seeing what the future holds for all of these young female players.
