FACILITY OF THE FUTURE
Setbacks aside, the University’s investment in a high-performance centre is earmarked for big and bright prospects By Lyndon Julius | Photography: Skhu Nkomphela
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ore than six years ago, in 2015, the sport department at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), headed up by Mandla Gagayi, along with the Faculty of Community and Health Sciences, set a plan in motion that eventually evolved and developed into a highly functional High-Performance Centre (HPC). That plan — a dream — would come to fruition just a few years later. The HPC is an ever-growing project with some exciting and ground-breaking technology being added to the resources that are already at the disposal of student athletes at UWC and will soon also be available to more athletes and professional players from other federations. Gagayi, who has previously highlighted what urged the University to deem the project as extremely necessary, has been eagerly awaiting the design and construction of the facility. And while construction is still ongoing, following the pandemic restrictions in 2020, plans to complete the HPC have been slightly pushed back. “Back in the day, coaches and team managers would make all the decisions, sometimes hindering the progress of the athletes,” Gagayi said in Blue & Gold Issue 5. “Now the aim is to bring in the research and perspectives of dieticians, biokineticists and psychologists, too.”
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Initially, it was the sport department under Gagayi’s leadership who were running the day-to-day activities of the HPC, along with sport scientists, biokineticists, physiotherapists, and more. However, in early 2019, Dr Barry Andrews was appointed as the project coordinator of the University’s newly opened HPC. Having completed his studies at the University of Stellenbosch, from undergraduate through to PhD, Dr Andrews joined the UWC family in 2008. “I completed my PhD at Stellenbosch University, where I worked for three years at the Stellenbosch University Sport Performance
Institute (SUSPI), that university’s high-performance centre,” Dr Andrews says. “I started working at UWC in 2008 in a part-time capacity before becoming permanent two years later.” He highlights the importance of sport scientists and the role they provide in developing and conditioning both student athletes and professional sportspersons. The progression at the HPC has been tremendous, especially given the state the country found itself in at the beginning of 2020. It was less than a year into Dr Andrews’ appointment as the new head of the HPC when South Africa went into a national hard lockdown for nearly seven months.
