The three Padua Collage campuses along the Mornington Peninsula, have each successfully delivered Tri2gether in term one 2020. The smaller PC campuses at Rosebud and Tyabb, came on board after a successful pilot at the Mornington campus in term one 2019.
From the initial interest at Mornington via Head of Sport and enthusiastic triathlete Rachel Ball, along with the support of T2G Ambassadors (first Steve Davis now John Winterburn) has made delivery of the program possible. Reducing the demand on staff and resources and including T2G Ambassador for expertise saw the success of the program across the three campuses.
In 2020, Tyabb and Rosebud were supported by T2G Ambassador Carole Irving. Both John and Carole provide immense support to the teachers with their planning and delivery of T2G; leading to engaging programs, encouraging more student to get involved and get active. The T2G program delivered a social training environment, helps build confidence, engagement and enjoyment for physical activity in a wide range of students.
“Each during our training, I would drive to Tyabb on a Tuesday and Rosebud on a Thursday, both at the student’s lunchtimes.
I work at the Padua Mornington College an decided that due to my great interest in Triathlons, I would do the Foundation coaching course to be able to
help the sport get more exposure for young athletes. We had approximately 7 students at Tyabb campus and 6 at Rosebud campus who were doing our training weekly.
It was sometimes quite difficult, due to other excursions and specific days off for each year level. So it made things slightly difficult to maintain a consistency.
However, I planned each week, with the first week discussing each of the disciplines and ensuring the students were doing some other training during the week, with parents, siblings or friends to support them.
We also spoke about the correct way to mount and dismount our bikes, along with checking the helmets and some students were required to purchase a more suitable helmet that fit correctly, especially if they had a smaller helmet, that barely fit them.
Once we had adjusted helmets and seat posts, we were able to begin. Each week, we did transitions from bike to run and also run to bike, just to get the students to feel their legs before and after.
The enthusiasm was amazing and was very inspiring to see these students so willing to train and listen carefully to instructions and learn more about the sport. Some had parents that had done triathlons, or even an uncle, who was also supporting their nephew through his training.
With the event date looming, we focussed on checking in with the students, in regards to their swimming training, as this was something which I was not able to attend, so we trusted that they were getting some swimming in a pool and also some went to the ocean to give it a go also, which would really help them on event day.
When Covid-19 came, well we had some very disappointed kids. All that training and no event. I discussed this with their teachers and explained that no training is ever a waste and that now that they have had a taste of transitioning, this would hold them in good stead for any future events, as they came available again. I am hoping that some maintained a slight regime of what we were trying to achieve, and come summer, we will engage with them prior to the end of year and get some more training in.” Carole Irving, Tri2gether Ambassador for Padua Tyabb and Rosebud
