Maroons Inspire Kids

Eight Queens­land Maroons and five Aus­tralian INAS Glob­al Games team mem­bers joined an excit­ed crowd of young aspir­ing ath­letes, at Logan City Spe­cial School for a sports train­ing session.

The day was organ­ised by Life Stream Aus­tralia, the peak sport body for Queens­land ath­letes with an intel­lec­tu­al impair­ment, in con­junc­tion with Queens­land Rug­by League.

“Look­ing at the delight on every child’s face shows what an amaz­ing once in a life­time oppor­tu­ni­ty this was for young chil­dren with a dis­abil­i­ty,” says Chantel Lewis, INAS Glob­al Games Com­mu­ni­ty Engage­ment Manager.

Belin­da Aubrey and her sons, Logan and Jay­cob agreed. All were very excit­ed to meet the Maroons and also to be inspired by the Aus­tralian INAS Glob­al Games stars.

“It was great for my chil­dren to see cham­pi­ons who show kids of all capa­bil­i­ty that any­thing is pos­si­ble by putting your heart into sport, prac­tis­ing hard and giv­ing it a go,” says Belinda.

Jay­cob and Logan were inspired, say­ing ​“we got all their sig­na­tures and we loved play­ing all the dif­fer­ent games. We want to be sporty like them.”

Alber­to Camp­bell, Mitchell James, Mac Rus­sell and Andre Riv­ett are part of the 2019 Aus­tralian Glob­al Games team while Andy Dun­lop, has rep­re­sent­ed Queens­land in Bas­ket­ball. ​“It is through sports days like this one today, that inspired me to aspire to becom­ing an elite ath­lete,” adds Alber­to Camp­bell. ​“I hope we can do the same for these kids.”

Queens­land Maroon cap­tain Daly Cher­ry-Evans summed up the day say­ing, ​“It was a won­der­ful event and we real­ly enjoyed spend­ing time with all the kids and hope we could inspire them to keep up their sport.”