15 years of inspiring Southlanders for SBS Bank Academy Southland
Spreadsheets. Can’t stand them. I know they serve a purpose, just not for me. Like those halftime interviews with coaches or warming up before your first tee shot. Don’t get me started on a Gantt chart.
But there is a spreadsheet filled with absolute gold. It’s on my desktop right now and it tracks 15 years’ worth of insights from athletes who have gone through SBS Bank Academy Southland.
If you haven’t heard about the Academy until now, its main function is a two-year programme which takes Southland’s most promising athletes and prepares them for the national and international stage.
Participants are usually in Year 12 and 13 at high school, although some have been included earlier or later, depending on where they are at.
This year’s Foundation Year intake was announced last month and is arguably the most diverse group the Academy has included, bringing together students from high schools across the province and a total of 11 sporting codes amongst the 12 participants.
Caption: 2022 Foundation Year athletes in the Mike Piper Training Centre. Photo: Nathan Burdon
Disc golf features for the first time. Para-swimming is a welcome inclusion. Some of those selected have already won national titles while at the time of writing we are nervously waiting to see if Sheldon Bagrie-Howley has become Southland’s first Commonwealth Games lawn bowler.
They will learn about nutrition, mental skills, strength and conditioning and athlete life. They’ll develop and be included in a network of young achievers.
But along with learning about how to be the best athlete they can be, they’ll learn about how to be the best people they can be, because that will last a lot longer than their sporting career.
Which brings us nicely back to the spreadsheet.
Along with any number of national titles, we have a host of athletes who have gone onto represent Southland and New Zealand on the international stage.
Think Youth Olympic gold medallist Aaron Barclay in triathlon, Commonwealth Games badminton player Anna Rankin or world champion track cyclist Eddie Dawkins, arguably this province’s most decorated athlete of all time.
But also consider the achievements which have been produced away from the court, field or track. College scholarship athletes like Atipa Mabonga, Hannah Miller and Morgan Hunter, to name but a few.
Rhodes Scholar Hamish Tomlinson. Harvard graduate Sammy Murrell. Michael Zhang at Duke.
Sure, these are high achieving kids, lucky enough to have a lot of support from parents, coaches, their sporting codes, community funders and any number of other sources. But even years after they were involved in the Academy, many are still using the lessons they learnt during their two years in the programme.
Josh Burnett, now one of New Zealand’s strongest under 23 mountainbikers when he’s not studying law at Otago University, talks about learning “so many mental skills that apply in both my studies and cycling that help me stay focused and able to perform at my best in both fields”.
Tom Sexton, a mainstay of Cycling NZ’s track endurance programme said: “The programme introduced me to over 90 percent of what an elite athlete might use or face and gave me the ability to leapfrog steps that other elite athletes had to face. I still use all the things I learned in the programme today”.
Cricketer Jacob Duffy, who has captained Otago and made his T20 debut for New Zealand a couple of summers ago said: “The Academy set me up to learn how to be a professional, the things it requires to do to make sport a full time loving and of course, to always say “yes, I would love to”.”
Since 2005, SBS Bank Academy Southland has had a profound effect on talent development in Southland sport, providing young athletes with the skills to be their best in sport and life - maybe even the ability to enjoy a spreadsheet.
