Aussie Women's Coaches Head to Brisbane

With the easing of travel restrictions, Australian Women’s Head Coaches spent the week in Brisbane to work with players and Australian Junior Team coaches.

Aussie Stingers Head Coach Predrag Mihailovic and Assistant Coach Dusan Damjanovic were able to travel to Brisbane for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, to meet with national senior and junior team players and attend various training sessions.

Like most Olympic sports, Australia’s senior and junior water polo teams are all training within their respective home States, working with the State Institutes in their daily training environment.

Mihailovic said it was a beneficial trip and was pleased to see how well players are doing given challenging circumstances everyone is working within.

“We are very fortunate in Water Polo to have strong Institute programs within our States and the support the National Institutes Network (NIN) has been invaluable during this COVID-19 pandemic.

“With a few of our senior players and plenty of our junior players based in Brisbane, it was a great opportunity to meet with them, check in on their training and talk through the coming weeks and months. The girls are all in good shape and positive mindsets.

“For us it was also good to work with Benn Lees who heads up the Queensland Academy of Sport (QAS) Women’s Program and was recently announced Head Coach for the Australian 20&U Women’s squad.

“Although we don’t know exactly what the future holds for us in terms of competition, we need to keep working hard to ensure our players can train and keep fit so when competitions do resume we are ready.

“We have different scenarios we are planning for and it was good to be able to work through those with the players and coaches,” he said.

Both the Australian Women’s and Men’s senior squads, along with the junior squads, are training within their respective home cities through their State Institutes, working hand in hand with the national coaches. Technology is keeping the full squads connected and allowing coaches to work with all squad members across Australia and overseas.