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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