James Cook group carries out talent ID

By ISAAC LIRI
A DELEGATION from the James Cook University, Queensland, are in Port Moresby assisting the High Performance Sport PNG with its Talent Identification Programme.
The JCU team include four exercise psychology students and two lecturers who arrived last Sunday and have begun collecting data and sharing technical skills with HPS PNG coaches.
On Tuesday, the HPS PNG team led by director Aaron Alsop took the JCU delegations to Sogeri National High School, Central, to run a talent identification clinic.
JCU student representative Chelsea O’Brien, who assisted HPS PNG coaches at Sogeri during the clinic, said it was her first time to interact with students from a village setting which she described as “a wonderful experience”.
“At Sogeri we were able to assist high performance athletes and coaches and we collected a lot of the data while they coached students using coaching techniques and exercise techniques,” O’Brien said.
Alsop said the visit to Sogeri was different from what normally run in terms of talent ID with schools.
“We had an invitation to come to Sogeri with a delegation from JCU to do talent ID in a different setting,” Alsop said.
“The opportunity to visit Sogeri gave a different setting to the JCU students and what HPS PNG talent ID normally does at the Centre of Excellence. Potential athletes are sometimes are outside from the scope we normally work around.”