Sport Tasman looks to focus on youth

Sport Tasman is undergoing a major transformation as it tries to adjust to the changing way people participate and engage in sport.

As reported by Stuff, the organisation is moving away from focusing solely on the 'traditional' sports model, and towards a broader emphasis on well-being, movement and active recreation.

At the heart of the new strategy is the region’s youth, where major declines in sport and recreation participation occur in the 15 to 17 years age category.

Sport Tasman chief executive Nigel Muir presented some of the organisation’s findings to the Nelson City Council’s Community and Recreation Committee in early December.

Muir said the realisation that things needed to change began about three years ago, through a partnership with the Rata Foundation aimed at improving college sport across the top of the south.

He advised "college sport has seen some of this data where it has become too competitive and on the whole, college students are telling us ‘we want to do more, but we don’t fit the mould’.

“If you're a good athlete and you fit the mould you're okay, but if you’re making up the numbers or you're not so good and don’t have so much confidence – something we see in a lot of our teenage girls in particular – where do you go?”

Muir said one of the key reasons young people were dropping out of sport was the loss of the fun factor, noting "as young people, primarily the reason we do physical activity is because it’s fun. And somewhere in the mix our sector loses the idea of this fun part, and we don’t deliver it as well as we need to for our young people.”

Muir said that in a national survey of 25,000 people across 16 different sporting codes, while there were high levels of satisfaction for men and those who had been in their sport for more than 10 years, young people were saying they were not satisfied those sports were meeting their needs.

He said the data showed something needed to be done.

Advising that while traditional sport continued to be a key part of Sport Tasman’s work and there were thousands of people doing amazing work in the space, Muir explained that the sector was particularly under pressure in the youth area.

He went on to say "for our organisation, we’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching around this – we used to be all about traditional sport. Our world has shifted, now we are firmly about well-being, and we use the tools of play, active recreation, movement and sport to help deliver it."

There was also a need for Sport Tasman to focus its efforts, rather than attempting a “cradle to the grave” approach.

Nuir added "we’re a small charitable trust, so we’ve elected with careful thinking to focus on rangatahi (youth). What if, instead of being a Christmas light, we could be more like a lighthouse, could we laser beam our resource and have a greater impact?”

One of the initiatives started in the past year has been Kōhina Māia, a three-year programme targeted to get more girls in the 12-18 age group into sport and recreation.

Kōhina Māia co-ordinator Ash Cowper said there various barriers for girls in that age group to get into sport, such as lack of confidence, skewed gender ratios, or over-competitive environments.

Cowper said the feedback from the girls involved, as well as parents and teachers, had been “hugely positive”.

As quoted by Stuff, Cowper stated "it's mainly been the feeling they’ve been having fun, feeling comfortable, and making friendships. And for some of the girls who do competitive sport, it's been a chance to enjoy themselves without the pressure of competition.”

She said about 500 girls had been involved in events run since mid-year, and there were plans to expand the programme further into Marlborough and Motueka in 2021.

Images: Sport Tasman's Kōhina Māia programme is aimed at getting girls from 12-18 more involved in sport and recreation (top) and ‘learn to skate’ events had been among the most popular in Sport Tasman's 2020 programme (below). Credit: Sport Tasman.