Good sports: Sports Talent Hub makes good athletes better

Brent Eastwood

Tonight signifies Sport Northland's first crack at the high performance side of sport with the launch of its Educare Northland Sports Talent Hub. Sport Northland chief executive Brent Eastwood took time to answer these questions.

With Sport Northland starting up the Educare Northland Sports Talent Hub, where did the whole idea come from?

For some time Sport Northland has been thinking about extending the Kauri Club grant scheme to include talent identification/development. However, the impetus for the project has come from Sport NZ, who have driven the Pathway to Podium initiative right across the country, which will be part of the Talent Hub.

Do you think there is a gap in the market, so to speak, in educating our talented young athletes?

Absolutely, particularly in provincial New Zealand. In the past this has been left to each sport to do, but with stretched resources even the major sports codes struggle to deliver this kind of programme. Sport NZ identified Regional Sports Trusts, such as Sport Northland, as being perfectly positioned to establish these hubs across the country.

What is it that you're looking forward to the most once the Talent Hub gets under way?

[It's] very exciting. For me it's being able to identify who our best young athletes are, then being able to provide them [with] the best education and support to enable them to go on and become high-performing athletes on the national and international stage at open level. We know for some athletes this may only occur once they leave Northland, but at the same time we hope they won't forget it was the region that provided this initial support to help them get to the top.

In terms of the athletes involved, what do you make of their achievements so far?

Northland has a massive amount of young talent across a range of sports, and all 13 athletes who have been named have outstanding CVs, however we want to see more of them going on to reach their true potential.

Do you have an idea as to what the Talent Hub will look like in five or 10 years' time?

It's still very early days, but wouldn't it be fantastic to think that instead of just one Northland athlete being named in the national Pathway to Podium we might have produced 15-20 of them and that the standard required to enter the Hub has got even higher than it is now.