Mr Mac excited for MC’s vibrant sporting future

This week we caught up with the Junior School Sport Coordinator, Mr Jacob McElevey, for the second instalment in a series of MC Sport Staff Q&A sessions.  We’ll hear about recent experiences and future goals for delivering sport and recreation programs for students in 2018, and beyond.

How does it feel to get settled into this new facility?
Relief! It feels good to have all of this space! It’s also good to have an area where you’re surrounded by all of our sports resources and for all of the Sports staff to be in the same space.

What have you enjoyed most in these first few weeks?
What I’ve really enjoyed is seeing the new opportunities for different sports such as badminton, volleyball and newcomb ball that have been created. It’s also great to have a safer area for students to play on. We have more students, more enthusiastic about playing, and putting themselves really out there as they play hard for the ball on custom-made surfaces.

What do you think the completed Centre will mean for students coming through MC over the next 10-15 years?
The Sports Centre is definitely a huge thing for new students coming through. Basketball is a growing culture at MC, particularly among our Junior School students. Participation was lower when I first started and it’s getting much bigger now.  So I can only see it continuing to grow over the next 10-15 years. It also means a wider variety of sport opportunities for a wider range of students, badminton is one we’re seeing at the moment. Being an all-weather facility also means increased physical activity for our students. We can potentially host Junior and Senior school classes together which opens a wider range of say, mentoring opportunities. The size of the Centre, means we can run different codes at the same time, for example we can have basketball, netball and athletics all going at the same time.

What types of events would you like to see MC host in the Centre?
I would love to see MC Sport host Gala events and invitationals, for HRIS schools and also local schools. I would also love to see MC Sport create our own Shield matches. We could name them after a successful former MC sport students and feature a range of sports such as futsal, volleyball, basketball, netball and table tennis.

Who would you like to see showcased in a ‘Hall of Fame’ when the foyer is completed?
Mr Martin! Actually I would be happy to see any of our successful past students. At the moment, I can think of a few Junior School students who are excelling in basketball who are prime candidates. I also think our students who are currently playing for the Newcastle Hunters who deserve to be up there. There is so much talent here at MC, and so much more to be developed over time!