Head of Sport, Senior School - Edition 7 - 2023

Winter Sport

Winter sport is well underway. Across the Senior and Preparatory Schools’ 53 winter sporting teams, our Sports team nominates Westminster to competitions; procures coaches, officials and staff managers; arranges transportation; secures and schedules venues; manages equipment and uniforms, and ensures that games are played as planned. Most teams are enjoying the return to consistent competition, a nice change after the upheaval of the past three years.

Draws are finally complete, although all draws are subject to change. As the competition is now in full swing, we are finding game information is sometimes issued later than we would like or is requiring last minute updating because of late communications from sporting associations or school opponents. We always aim to get this information distributed as quickly as possible but apologise if it seems like it is last minute.

The Sports Department receives the draws from the two relevant associations governing school sport, which rely on timely and accurate nominations from member schools. When we get them, we distil, check and double-check them before putting the information into useful formats for us and into a readable form to be distributed. While that process plays out, we receive changes to draws which require us to double back. Just this week, we received changes to boys' and girls' fixtures late Thursday afternoon that impact on our programming over the coming weeks.

Girls’ sport is governed by the Independent Girls’ Schools’ Sports Association – IGSSA. There are 10 member schools. In some competitions when schools might not be able to field a team, another non-member school may be invited into the competition to balance the draw and avoid byes.

Boys’ sport is governed by the Sports Association for Adelaide Schools – SAAS. There are 30 member schools in SAAS and the competitions have far more variations than IGSSA.

When we have a staff manager aligned with a team, we rely on the manager to communicate directly with players and families. If a staff manager is absent, Marianne Collier or I will communicate with teams and families. Among participating schools, illness, conflicting school events, teams becoming unviable are the main reasons behind changes in draws/fixtures. As other schools are also currently experiencing, we are feeling the impact of illness amongst students and staff. This, of course, impacts on our teams and is likely to result in last minute changes.

Over the 53 teams, there are generally not many changes in the fixtures, but there are enough to ask that you please do check the weekly fixture and your email inbox as games approach. The weekly fixtures are posted on­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ SEQTA Engage - Welcome page - Sport Weekly Fixtures. They are there by mid-week but can be updated with any changes until as late as Friday afternoon.

In the meantime, we are reviewing our process to ensure we have the most effective means within our channels of communications of sharing and bringing to your family’s attention ‘last minute’ updated information.

Mike Martens
Head of Sport, Senior School