A NEW ERA OF HIGH PERFORMANCE

BY LYNNE RIPPENAAR-MOSES

THE NEW HIGH-PERFORMANCE CENTRE (HPC) of the University of the Western Cape (UWC) opened in January 2022. The project is led by Associate Professor Barry Andrews from the Sport, Recreation and Exercise Science Department (SRES). “The history of high performance at UWC is centred around individual sporting codes. ‘Richer’ sports like cricket, rugby and soccer do more in terms of high performance because of their status in South Africa and the revenue that they bring in, making more resources available to sports players,” says Prof Andrews.

“Those three sports have a really good track record at UWC in terms of successes, but it has also been a case of hit-and-miss. Some years we excel and others, due to changes in players or coaching staff, we don’t. The High-Performance Centre is an avenue for all sporting teams and players to consistently achieve at a maximal level.” THE HPC OFFERS sport-specific training, strength and conditioning, nutrition, physiotherapy, biokinetics and sport psychology services. Student athletes can utilise the centre’s services and T gym for an annual fee of R1 000. IN 2017, physiotherapist Brent Hess and performance (strength and conditioning) specialist and sports scientist Keenan Watson were tasked by Prof Josè Frantz, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation, to investigate the level of institutional support for high performance.

HESS, now the manager of the HPC, has worked as a physiotherapist and a consultant to Ajax Cape Town, several franchise clubs and individual athletes, and worked with provincial, national and Olympic athletes for seven years at the Sports Science Institute of South Africa (SSISA).

WATSON is a retired national athlete who represented South Africa and the university internationally before starting a sports consultancy and later an academy that ran sport science programmes to develop school athletes. He returned to UWC to implement similar programmes in the athletics department and other high-performance sporting codes.

“Before implementing a strategy, we had to complete a needs and SWOT analysis of high performance at the university. We interviewed various UWC role-players, including Prof Frantz, the Director of Sport, sports administrators, student athletes and organisations affiliated with some sporting codes at UWC,” says Hess.

THE TWO ALSO VISITED high-performance centres at Stellenbosch University, the University of Cape Town and the Nelson Mandela University, and travelled to KU Leuven and Gent University in Belgium to evaluate international best practices.

“KU Leuven’s high-performance programme impressed me the most,” says Watson. “They can analyse student athletes’ performance in their biomechanics laboratory and get a 360° view of performance. They also had a movement platform that analyses how a player would move when, for example, side-stepping or changing direction on the ice when skiing. With this data, they can show the athlete how to move more efficiently without adding physical stress or risking injury.”

Hess says: “Each university has a unique manner in which they establish their high-performance centres. The centres at the institutions we visited had abundant funding. Therefore, the infrastructure, design and equipment that they had were ‘top class’. At UWC, much more thought went into the design and implementation of the centre because, as a historically disadvantaged institution, we had to adapt and work with what we have, but still attain the results of a fully functional high-performance centre.”

Our centre gives student athletes the tools that they will need to thrive and achieve at a professional level.

WATSON, HESS AND BIOKINETICIST ANGELO NELSON were already working with UWC Sport and providing some high-performance services when Prof Andrews became project leader in 2018. Zoleka Bavuma joined as the administrator in the same year.

PROF ANDREWS says: “I realised that we did not have an identity because all the areas we were using to do our work were borrowed areas. Another big flaw was that we had no women staff to work with women athletes.”

With funding from a Historically Disadvantaged Institution (HDI) Development Grant from the Department of Higher Education and Training, Prof Andrews brought in biokineticist Kirsten Muller and Robyn Phillips, a physiotherapist who works with SA Netball, to provide women athletes with access to high-performance services offered by women.

Space was identified on campus to establish a dedicated centre and high-performance gym with funding from the university. While the HPC was being developed, the team worked from temporary premises at the university’s stadium and started offering high-performance clinics for athletes from all sporting codes. Dietitian Carinne Adams and a consultant sports physician, Dr Janesh Ganda, added more expertise to the team.

“HIGH PERFORMANCE IS A LIFESTYLE. It encompasses what you eat before training, the amount of sleep that you get, post-injury rehabilitation and prevention of injury, gym workouts and sports psychology. Athletes who want to go professional and do not get high-performance training when they are between 18 and 25 – which is when new talent develops and is spotted – will struggle to make it at a professional level,” says Prof Andrews.

“Our centre gives student athletes the tools that they will need to thrive and achieve at a professional level and our hope and goal is that they take the tools and skills that we give them and grow to become a success in their chosen sports.” B+G