Amelia Twiss placed third in a mountain-biking competition, but was denied her medal. Photo / NCP Images
Amelia Twiss placed third in a mountain-biking competition, but was denied her medal. Photo / NCP Images
THE FACTS
Amelia Twiss, a homeschooled mountain biker, was denied her bronze medal due to competition rules.
Sport New Zealand’s 2024-2028 plan aims to maintain activity levels and improve equity for tamariki and rangatahi.
Twiss and George Fisher will cycle 800km to Parliament, advocating for better access for home-schooled athletes.
In recent weeks, a young Amelia Twiss has popped up in the news. A talented mountain biker, she finished third at the North Island Championship. She then stood by and watched as her bronze medal was laid around the neck of the fourth-placed competitor. The message was clear,you can compete as a home-schooled student, but you cannot excel. The question is, who wins when young people are facing such obstacles in sport?
When Sport New Zealand announced its strategic plan for 2024-2028, at its centre was a focus on our young people. A response to the research that shows we play less as we age, informal participation rates peaking at ages 5-7 and then steadily declining from there. The strategic focus area for this four-year period has three key aspirations: maintaining physical activity levels of tamariki, reducing the decline in physical activity levels for rangatahi and improving equity for tamariki and rangatahi who are less active. All goals we can get behind, except it seems, if you’re patrolling the school gate.
Kids at play in the 2022 Youth Futsal Championship Finals. Photo / Photosport
Before high school, this gatekeeping didn’t appear to exist. Sports are primarily run by clubs under the guidance of regional sports organisations which are umbrellaed beneath their national counterparts. Kids connect to the club in their community and play on. Until they age out of this environment, the pathways to participation are through schools. For homeschooled kids, this means relying on a spot on a composite team or concessions from event organisers.
This is not just an issue for homeschooled kids, but also heavily affects girls’ participation and those who play less traditional sports. If you’re a young man who plays rugby or a young woman who plays netball at school, the current system will work well for you. Others will turn up on the first day of term and hope their sport is offered or they too join the search for a composite team to join. If they are lucky, they will have parents with the means to move them towards opportunity elsewhere. If not, they will be another young person contributing to the statistics.
These barriers within the current school sport system seem like the exact thing Sport New Zealand’s strategic focus should have in their sights. They bring into question whether school sport is the best answer to promote active recreation among young people. The status quo has willing participants, homeschooled or unserviced, being kept out of sport unless a school nearby has low numbers or low aspirations. As composite teams, like homeschooled kids, they are at times unable to win under certain competition rules. None of this is going to help grow participation rates. None of this helps keep our kids active.
What it does instead is entrench the very thing all the rules within school sport claim they are looking to prevent. They position sporting achievements as the selling point within a school’s prospectus. School sport programmes can then become elitist. Risking the focus becoming less about the individual’s development and more about the school’s image. If the cutthroat world of high-performance sport is introduced too early, we risk burning kids out before they have even begun.
Amelia Twiss is riding to Parliament with her petition. Photo / Supplied
Amelia Twiss will take her case to the steps of Parliament next month. Alongside fellow homeschooled athlete George Fisher, they will cycle 800km to bring their petition to the country’s attention. The petition echoes Sports New Zealand’s own vision, a commitment to maintaining and growing our young folks’ participation in physical activity. A system works best where talent is freely met by opportunity. Sport New Zealand has an opportunity to meet these talented athletes and their own objectives. They will just need to step outside of the school gate.
