St. Norbert College hosts a diverse variety of students from Indigenous and multicultural backgrounds with many of the students having limited to no experience playing football.

It’s because of this the Club has run the program at the school annually since 2017, aiming to entice any students interested in further pursuing football to sign up for the Naitanui Academy or the Female Next Generation Academy.

Rowley and Davison assisted Community and Game Development coaches in running the sessions over the course of three weeks, which took students through kicking, handballing, tackling and marking, before getting them into small gameplay activities to give them a sense of what playing football is like.

Naitanui Academy Manager Chris Brown hailed the Academies In-School Program with another year of successful growth for a diverse range of students.

“It’s a fantastic program that we love coming back to each year as we get some really impactful outcomes out of it in both the Naitanui Academy and now the Female Next Generation Academy,” he said.

“A lot of the kids who took part in the program this year don’t play footy so it’s about educating them on the game, building a link between footy at the school, the Naitanui Academy or even community footy, and hopefully getting them on board as a West Coast Eagles fan.

“We’re seeing more and more kids come on board at the start of the program who have only just picked up a footy and by the end they can’t wait to come back to the academy the next year.

“Every year we see students who catch the bug and fall in love with the game from this program, which makes it a really worthwhile investment for the Club and a great outcome as a whole for the game of AFL.”

The West Coast Eagles will continue our ongoing commitment to developing young footballers in our academies for the remainder of 2023, with our In-School program with St. Norbert College to return in 2024.