Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Powerade Performance Academy concludes the major cities tour triumphantly


The Powerade Performance Academy for 2019 concluded at the Wanderers Country Club in Johannesburg this past Sunday. After a successful run of academies in Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town there was a lot of enthusiasm around the final academy with performance experts ensuring the attending school coaches were given insights and knowledge on effective coaching.

Powerade has aimed much of its efforts on high school coaches in recognising their role as prime influencers of the next generation of South Africa’s sporting heroes.

The list of experts for the Johannesburg leg included; High Performance coach John McGrath, former national team goalkeeper and Supersport United goalkeeper coach Andre Arendse, former Proteas Netball player and University Netball coach Zanele Mdodana and Natalie Du Toit, Paralympics and Commonwealth Games gold medallist.

Puso Makume, Powerade Sponsorship Manager said “As we conclude and reflect on the Powerade Performance Academy for 2019, it has been a privilege to have interacted with almost 300 high school coaches throughout the Powerade Performance Academies in the country. With the inclusion of coaching experts, Powerade has introduced school sport coaches to appropriate training, skills development and the importance of hydration. We hope all coaches will inspire their players to be Always Forward and continue to nurture the next breed of sports heroes.”

Speaking on Understanding the Role of Coaching, Andre Arendse took to the stage and touched on the importance of talent identification and identifying key areas of development to ensure you enable a progressive an inclusive environment.  “It’s been such a pleasure to be part of the Powerade movement as coaches play an impactful role in shaping a well-rounded athlete and team player.” he shared.

The passionate university netball coach, Zanele Mdodana, spoke about the aspect of Changing the Game and Changing Lives which many of the high school coaches could relate to.  “The Powerade Academy gave the opportunity to share my journey I had taken with the Maties team and how we were able to change the players lives through changing the game which lead to the team coming together to seal a successful 2019 season. Through my experiences, it’s been imperative for players to hold one another accountable and create a coach-lead but player centric programme for their desired outcome.”

McGrath dialled the energy up with a practical session where he showed feats of strength and practical examples of breaking boundaries by bending nails, breaking chains, tearing packs of cards and breaking an adjustable wrench.  “These acts I do are all metaphors for what you can do and what is possible. Everyone has an inner voice that prevents us from achieving our goals and it is up to us to decide if we would like to listen to that voice or not.”
“The subject of shifting sports paradigms is one to help coaches of any level understand that to achieve certain things, coaches need to train players to abandon preconceived ideas that people have about their abilities and about what is conceived as a boundary.”

Natalie du Toit concluded the Powerade Performance Academy by talking about How to get the best out of your athlete through coaching and mentoring. “Coaching and mentoring is a topic is spoken about more often at International Olympic and Paralympic committees. Through my session, I wanted to get the coaches to think about the two roles and to see what role they want to play with the teams they coach.”

To connect the coaches across the country, visit the Powerade Facebook Community, Coaches Corner where coaches can interact, share their stories and receive bitesize expert advice from this year’s diverse panel of Powerade Academy experts.

For more information, visit Powerade Facebook page (@PoweradeZA)


Zanele Mdodana

Natalie du Toit

Andre Arendse









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