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Maia Lewis on youth sport

Video transcript

Maia Lewis on youth sport

Video transcript

I started playing multiple sports when I was young, so not just cricket which I'm more renowned for, but hockey as well, softball - I used to play softball in the morning, cricket in the afternoon. And then we used to have a break of about six weeks between seasons and then I could play hockey and indoor cricket, and a little bit of rugby as well, and even picked up a badminton racquet and filled in for my mum's tennis team.

What I did do, was probably, did a little bit too much, so I ended up with having a knee reconstruction ACL reconstruction when I was 27 and sort of at the peak of my White Fern career and that was a big big blow for me as well but a big reality check.

So you know it's really important to be able to try and monitor as a kid you just want to play everything, but as influencers and coaches and parents we need to keep a track on that as well.

So our challenge is to make sure we're still listening to the voice of the participant, because it's quite easy just to listen to the coaches and administrators and what they want, but it's about listening to what the participants want.

The saying practice makes perfect, which you know has been preached for years and years, but it's what you do that counts within those practices, and what you're achieving, and and the improvements that you that you make.

And on the whole I suppose you know like kids, everyone develops different rates. I know my White Ferns, team one of my players made her debut when she was 33. You know in cricket that's probably when your your mind has matured the most, especially as a batter, so I think we need to keep giving people the opportunity to develop at their own rate, because there are those late bloomers who we may miss out on.

Still we're getting these parents who are still living their dream through their kids. Those sort of parents need to step back and let the kids make some decisions.

So that's really important to me to make sure that everyone within sport and the enablers, the coaches, and the parents are doing everything that's just athlete focused, and for the athlete they need to be there first and foremost.

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