Shaping the Future at the AIS Women in Sport Congress

For young women sport is super important for so many different reasons and, and probably the reason that I think especially as a father the reason that I'm most interested about is that sport lays the groundwork for some really amazing adaptations that can help young women stay healthy throughout their entire lifetime. They'll build up the habits that are going to help them get through middle-life the habits that will get them through menopause the habits that are going to get them through being 70 - 80 - 90 years old and and not tripping and falling and not hurting themselves so you look at sport like go do sport it's fun learn how to win. But really sport is so much more than that. It's about learning about habits that are going to be super important for allowing this this body that we all get and this body for these young women to to live and to to serve them well throughout their entire life.

Trying to keep the fun in sport I think is a really important piece. And remembering why we got into it in the first place so as a young girl, you know dancing around the kitchen or you know, air-shooting netball you know at the breakfast table. Think about the joy and why you got into sport. And I think it's not just for the female athletes that my message is for. It’s for parents, it's for coaches. It's for everyone. How can we keep that fun? Because, as bodies are changing it can get harder to stay in sport. We know that with our female athletes so how can we keep the fun and the joy there? Because there's just so many positives and benefits of women staying in sport.

I think the really important thing is to enjoy sport. Sport doesn't have to lead to an Olympic, Paralympic or Commonwealth Games. You can enjoy sport and partake in sport for all the other things it brings. Connecting with people that you might not even normally get to know being part of a team building resilience. Just the fun of sport. Don't feel like all roads have to lead to high performance.

I just had the most privileged youth I reckon as far as sport goes. It was such a fun social although competitive really, really experience of sport and I want all women and girls to experience that too.

I think young women and girls need to realize that it's worth doing the hard thing and sport gives us a very unique opportunity to challenge yourself and prove that we're capable of more.

Sport and exercise it is medicine. We absolutely know that there are life skills that you learn from sport but exercise is something that we absolutely have to be doing across the life cycle. You know, we would love for our girls, our athletes to be continuing on with their exercise well into their 90s. We know that it's good for health. We know that it's good for their bones. We know that it's good for community. Just enjoy it. Do whatever you want to do. Be active. And if you can involve yourself in sport too that that'd be great.

It's so important for adolescent females to stay in sport because you get so many physical benefits mental health benefits. There's great social connections and also we see a lot of athletes progress into leadership roles after they've participated in sport so there's so many benefits. And, it's really great to see that young athletes want to participate and we want to see more of it moving into the future.