This week in Sports Education News – Why aren’t AFL fans attending games? Sportswomen shattering the stereotypes around sexuality. The AIS has developed player tracking technology, which it is making available to Australias national teams for free. 91% of sports fans use social media on a daily basis. Australian children are exposed to junk food messages for up to three hours a week while playing junior sport, according to a study.Brock McLean says he is surprised there is still no AFL player who has come out as gay, as he called on the community to take part in the largest ever Australian-based international study on homophobia in sport.
Sport builds girls’ confidence, says schools leader
6/8/2014: Judith Burns – BBC News
Girls should take part in competitive sport to build confidence and resilience, the leader of a group of girls’ schools will argue this week.
Helen Fraser, chief executive of the Girls Day School Trust (GDST), will tell the group’s conference that sport can help girls cope with failure.
All girls “and not just the sporty ones” should take physical exercise, Ms Fraser will say.
Research that girls are far less active than boys is worrying, she argues.
“Girls who are in schools which focus solely on academic achievement can experience success after success, and may never learn that you can have a real setback and come back and recover”, Ms Fraser told BBC News.
Why aren’t fans attending games?
6/14/2014: David Culbert – Sports Business Insider
It has been the big question in the NRL and AFL so far in 2014.
Why aren’t fans attending games?
Everyone has a reason, and both codes have been spinning the numbers inside-out to tell the story that things aren’t as bleak as the detractors say they are.
Just this week the Daily Telegraph reported that NRL crowds are on the improve after a very slow start to the season and the worst opening round attendances in a decade.
In the AFL, if not for the bumper numbers at the Adelaide Oval things would be bleak indeed. Although in fairness to the AFL they have driven the strategy to redevelop the Adelaide Oval and deserve to reap the rewards of increased attendances at the new venue. Can you imagine how bleak the overall crowd figures would be if Port Adelaide and Adelaide were still playing at Football Park?
According to talkback callers AFL crowds are down because of unwatchable game styles and variable pricing that forces members to pay additional dollars to secure a seat at premium matches, a claim that moved outgoing AFL boss Andrew Demetriou to blame ‘no-shows’ for the decrease in crowds.
Coach Education and Development: Beyond the Social Web
6/09/2014: Keith Lyons – Keithlyons.com
In 1990, Peter Senge argued that learning organisations are:
…organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.
The emergence of a learning sporting organisation in the next decade requires leaders to embrace and pursue how to link knowledge within and outside their organisation. Fefie Dotsika (2012a) observes that while larger companies “take better advantage of intellectual assets, in order to enhance productivity and increase competitiveness”, smaller companies with web presence “have remained reluctant to do the same”.
Sportswomen shattering the stereotypes around sexuality
6/10/2014: Anastasia Prikhodko – The Roar
Sport has become an international podium for spectators and players to share stereotypical views about sexuality and gender.
In 2013, NBA player Jason Collins came out to the media. His brave actions influenced NFL player Michael Sam and Los Angeles Galaxy footballer Robbie Rogers to also come out.
These positive actions trigged follow-up stories, TV interviews, and a considerable amount of media attention.
Coincidently, US basketballer Brittney Griner, Australian Southern Stars cricketer Alex Blackwell, Olympian snowboarder Belle Brockhoff, and footballer Michelle Heyman also came out.
Advocate for women in sport and blogger Danielle Warby says, “Alex was open within the team anyway, just not out to the media and after her interview with the ABC, where she came out, nothing happened, no one noticed.”
Every move you make
6/6/2014: Nicole Jeffery – The Australian
GEORGE Orwell had it right, at least in a sporting context. In the near future, banks of cameras and computers will be monitoring every move of every player on the field and feeding the data back instantly to their coaching teams.
Our elite sportsmen and women will have to get used to Big Brother watching them because there will be nowhere to hide with the technology being rolled out by the Australian Institute of Sport.
In the past five years, soccer’s UEFA Champions League and the National Basketball Association have invested millions in a cutting-edge player-tracking system called SportVu, which uses Israeli missile-tracking technology. But the AIS has now developed equivalent technology at a fraction of the price, and which it is making available to Australia’s national teams for free.
AIS sports scientist Stuart Morgan has developed a system that could have a dramatic impact on game strategy because it allows coaches to track the movements not only of their own players but also of the opposition.
Junior sport home of junk food
6/6/2014 : Cathy O’Leary Medical – The West Australian
Australian children are exposed to junk food messages for up to three hours a week while playing junior sport, according to a study.
Researchers say children are being bombarded with unprecedented levels of fast food and sugary drink advertising via companies sponsoring community sports clubs.
The research comes after an international report last week revealed that Australia’s adult obesity level was growing at one of the fastest rates in the world.
One in four children was also overweight or obese.
The Australian study, published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, combined information about children’s participation in community sport with patterns of food and drink sponsorship of sports clubs.
Children playing outdoor cricket and rugby league were most exposed to unhealthy messages.
Lead author Bridget Kelly, from the University of Wollongong’s school of health and society, said her research team was staggered by the magnitude of children’s cumulative exposure to
Homophobia survey a sporting first
6/6/2014 :Tessa van der Riet – The Age
Brock McLean says he is surprised there is still no AFL player who has come out as gay, as he called on the community to take part in the largest ever Australian-based international study on homophobia in sport.
The Carlton midfielder says the homophobia issue is still “very close” to him, after speaking out on the subject in a Fairfax article about his gay sister Ellie last year.
I’d like to think that in today’s environment there would have been someone come out by now, but it just highlights how hard a decision it must be for anyone coming out.
McLean, 28, has encouraged his fellow players and the general public, gay or straight, to spend 10 minutes answering questions anonymously about homophobia they may have seen or experienced in the sporting arena.
“I just think it’s really important that people take that time out of their day to take the survey,” McLean said. “It’s only something little that people can do but it’s going to make a massive difference to a huge group of people.”
