Athletes get chance to continue education

By ISAAC LIRI
High Performance Sport Papua New Guinea (HPS PNG) signed an agreement with the IEA College of Tafe yesterday for athletes to earn scholarships and further their education.
The memorandum of understanding (MOU) will see selected athletes in HPS PNG programmes receive scholarships from IEA.
HPS PNG director Aaron Alsop described the MOU as a significant pathway that would benefit athletes in their programmes.
“HPS PNG has a philosophy which is very important for athletes to have a dual career where we encourage them to study, and coach them to have a job along with their sporting career,” Alsop said.
“We want to ensure that athletes are thinking about life after sports and we find that athletes have a better experience when that transition comes.
“HPS PNG has been doing a lot of work in the university sports space for about three years and we thought it was important to see the academic side of the relationship and we are grateful that IEA have come on board.”
IEA manager Chris Jones said there were two parts of the MOU.
“One is for IEA to provide scholarships for high performance athletes to study at IEA to attain qualification,” Jones said.
“The other part is that the foundation is going to provide to IEA students the option of taking up high performance courses.”
“We have about 12,000 students enrolled at the IEA across Papua New Guinea and among them are some excellent sports people.
“So these IEA students will enhance their sporting skills by coming to HPS PNG.”
Jones said IEA would provide four scholarships in the second semester which starts in July and the courses will run for six months.
The MOU expires on June 22, 2019, with an option to extend the agreement depending on the outcome.