Adelaide University Rugby Union Club Scores Big with Prestigious Elite Program Partnership Grant
Published Thu 14 Dec 2023
The Adelaide University Rugby Union Club’s Academy program has received a major boost with the club receiving an Elite Program Partnership grant to put towards the strength and conditioning component of their academy and a collaboration with the Adelaide University Fitness Hub.
For clubs with elite and pathway programs, the Elite Program Partnership supports the progression and success of athletes, coaches, officials, and teams. This program is to develop a stronger high-performance pathway, helping athletes and staff within the sporting community.
The Club engaged the Adelaide University Fitness Hub to run field and gym strength and conditioning sessions including baseline testing and program completion testing metrics. The Fitness Hub has also provided two educational sessions for players teaching them about the importance of warmups, cool downs, recovery and nutrition.
Club President Kim Evans said the grant has allowed the club to take its Academy program to another level.
“The Elite Program Partnership Grant has allowed us to offer the Adelaide University Rugby Academy (AURA) Program to a significantly higher standard,” Kim explained.
“We have been able to bring exceptional guest coaches to Adelaide and engage industry-best nutritionists and sports psychologists, exposing our players and our own coaches to new ideas, different perspectives, and specialized technical training from some of the best around.”
Kim said the AURA program was created due to a need to improve on field performances.
“Our performance in most grades has been underwhelming for many years, and we recognised we wouldn’t see much improvement without a paradigm shift in our approach – we needed a game-changer, both literally and metaphorically,” Kim mentioned.
“We needed to ratchet up skills and technical understanding, and set new levels of standards and expectations.
(photos - L: Rob Sadler + R: Sean Hedge and Andrew Fraser from the International Rugby Academy of Australia)
“Through AURA, a cohort of our players have been undertaking an eight-week off-season development program to rapidly elevate their skills and understanding, give them a high-performance experience, and support them to reach their full potential.
“The 2023 AURA cohort includes 35 talented and committed players from all our senior grades and U16s/U18s, to ensure that the program will provide an uplift across the breadth of the club and contribute to long-term sustainability and leadership.
“The AURA program includes three sessions each week: speed and agility, strength and stability, and technical rugby skills. There are also weekly workshops on nutrition, sports psychology, game analysis, and activation and recovery.
“In designing the AURA program, we took our inspiration from the development academies common in many sports, and from the high-performance program of the University of Adelaide Roma’s Rugby 7s Program.”
(photos - Sharni Smale (nee Williams) Australia Sevens Player)
Kim paid credit to the Fitness Hub and was happy with the collaboration.
“AURA's Strength and Conditioning component was designed for us by Luke Harris, who also ran the speed and agility sessions and ran workshops of warming up, cooling down, and recovery. Strength and stability sessions were held in the Fitness Hub and run by Jordan, Joel and Izzy,” Kim said.
“We were really keen to collaborate with the Fitness Hub in delivering the AURA program, knowing they had the expertise and facilities to manage the Strength & Conditioning component for us.
“As a University club, we also prefer to use Uni facilities when we can, and the Fitness Hub was obviously also very convenient for the many AURA members who are UoA students.”
Kim said they were thankful to Adelaide University Sport and Fitness and the Fitness Hub in helping them to scope, fund, design and deliver the AURA program as well the Adelaide Uni Judo Club who welcomed the Academy who let them come to their dojo to learn some throws.
Kim also mentioned the collaboration’s success would be put to the test over the next season but that she had already noticed a lot of improvement in players' skills, strength and conditioning and engagement.
To find out more about the Adelaide University Rugby Union Club visit their Facebook page.
