Olivia Barry (8) gets low to the ground to get under this obstacle. 031012RCA03
IT was school holiday fun with a sporting focus at Tamworth’s No.1 Oval yesterday.
About 70 youngsters indulged in some sporting fun through the Northern Inland Academy of Sport’s Junior Activities Day.
The program continues in Armidale today and similar numbers have booked in.
It’s the fourth year of the one-day camp, although this year it’s been rebranded and beefed up.
“There’s a lot more sport-related activities,” NIAS executive officer Peter Annis-Brown said.
They have winter and summer covered with the range of sports participants get to experience including cricket, football, netball, rugby league, rugby union, softball and ultimate frisbee.
“This year we’ve brought in other sports,” Annis-Brown said.
“We haven’t had cricket before and we haven’t had rugby league before.
“We’re providing more
variety.”
He also covered running techniques with them, and program manager Scott Campbell developed an obstacle course.
The participants were split into three groups – green, red and blue – based on age and rotated around the various activities.
They came from as far away as Moree and Gunnedah and all had fun.
That’s what the focus of the day is.
“It’s all based on fun,” Annis-Brown said.
“Kids learn by having fun.”
Formerly the Healthy Kids Camp, the program was initiated with a philosophy of getting kids active with the target age group kids 7-12 years old.
“Underpinning that is to provide them with just a snap-shot of what it’s like to be in the Northern Inland Academy of Sport,” Annis-Brown said.
Several of the academy’s athletes were helping out, some of whom were participants
previously.
There’s been a few instances of kids that were involved with the camp going on to the
academy.
The University Department of Rural Health students were also there including former NIAS athlete Beth Croker.
They went through warm-ups with the kids, and talked to them about nutrition and hydration.
Annis-Brown was “really happy” with the numbers.
The last couple of years for whatever reason, they’ve been a bit down, but they’ve picked up this year.
“We’ve always knew we had the right product we just had to make sure everyone knew about it,” he said.