UTS HPRC Symposium – Connecting Health and Performance: Beyond the playing field

Greta is a Sports Science Consultant at NSW Swifts. She holds a Bachelor of Exercise & Sports Science and Masters of High Performance Sport and has worked as a sports scientist in a range of professional sporting organisations.

Greta worked as the NRL High Performance Sports Science Coordinator for the Wests Tigers for four years. She is currently an Associate Lecturer in the Work Integrated Learning team at UTS working across the undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

Greta has worked in professional netball for the past two seasons, providing sports science support to the coaching staff and playing roster. Her involvement in the HPRC Symposium will be in conjunction with the Head Coach at the NSW Swifts, Briony Akle, where they will discuss the synergies and processes of working together.

Dr Stephen Crowcroft is the Senior Physiologist (National Technical Lead - Swimming) at the Queensland Academy of Sport (QAS). Prior to this position, Stephen was a Physiologist at the NSW Institute of Sport for eight years where he also conducted his PhD research examining training monitoring in swimming.

These roles have enabled Stephen to work with swimmers in their preparations for Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games and World Championships. He has specific expertise in training load monitoring, working synergistically with coaches in an attempt to understand fatigue and optimal recovery processes.

At the HPRC Symposium, Stephen will discuss various aspects of how he has worked with coaches and how he has translated his research findings into preparing and monitoring high-level swimmers.

Brad McGee was an elite track and road cyclist who became the first Australian to lead the general classification in all three Grand Tours; the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana, an incredible achievement. He recorded two stage wins in the Tour de France.

Alongside his success in road cycling, Brad won five Olympic medals for Track cycling (1x Gold, 1x Silver and 3x Bronze), two World Championship Gold medals and five Commonwealth Games Gold medals. 

Following his professional career on the bike, Brad was a team director with CSC-Saxo Bank. Then spent nearly a decade working as a Head Coach at NSWIS and was the Road Technical Director at Cycling Australia leading national and international campaigns.  

Brad is currently the High Performance Coach Advisor for the NSW Institute of Sport. Now instead of coaching athletes, he coaches the coaches and supports their development. He is also an ambassador for the MS Gong ride.

Brad is an Honorary Fellow of the Human Performance Research Centre at the University of Technology Sydney and at the Symposium will talk about the development of sports science in cycling from his perspective as an athlete and coach. 

Associate Professor Camilla Brockett is Deputy Leader of the Sport Performance and Business research program at VU’s Institute for Health and Sport. She is a translational research specialist, overseeing industry/community-driven collaborations that provide a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to improving sport engagement, performance, and the mental health and wellbeing of sport participants.

Her areas of research include high-performance sport systems and policy development, athlete development pathways, and sport for sustainable development.

Dr Tom Cross has practised Sport and Exercise Medicine for the past 25 years. He is presently one of the Co-directors of The Stadium Clinic in Sydney and predominantly works in private practice.

Tom has gained fellowship to the Australasian College of Sport & Exercise Physicians. He is currently highly involved in clinical research working on the "ACL heal project" as the senior author and lead Clinician. The ACL-heal project is a non-surgical treatment option for patients who suffer acute ACL injury which involves an initial 12-week bracing protocol followed by standardised ACL rehabilitation.

Alongside his clinical work, Tom has worked with a range of athletes and professional teams over the past two decades including the Sydney Swans Football Club, Sydney Roosters NRL Club, NSW Waratahs and Australian Rugby Union Wallabies. He currently assists the Melbourne Storm and Gold Coast Titans NRL teams as an Assistant Doctor when they play in Sydney.

His five-year tenure as Head Doctor for the Sydney Swans Football Club led to research into the mental health management of professional athletes which he will present on at the HPRC Symposium.

Dr Edel Langan is a Performance Psychologist currently working with Cricket NSW, across both male and female programs.

Edel has extensive experience working in a wide range of high-performance settings, including both Olympic and Paralympic sports.

Alongside her role at cricket, Edel acts as a psychologist on the AIS mental health referral network, supporting athletes in optimising their mental health and wellbeing. 

Gordon Allan is an Australian Paralympic cyclist who won a silver medal at the 2019 World Para-cycling Track Championships in Apeldoorn.

Making his Paralympic debut at the Tokyo 2020 Games, Gordon finished in fifth position in the men’s 1000m time trial C1-2 (C2), crossing the line in a personal best time of 1:10.331. 

Gordon was a Mental Health Ambassador as part of partnership between Lifeline and the Australian Institute of Sport. He engaged with the community to raise awareness of mental health issues and encourage anyone who needs support to reach out and ask for help.

• Bachelor of Applied Science (Exercise and Sports Science +  Nutrition), University of Sydney
• Graduate Bachelor of Education (Secondary), Charles Sturt University
• GIANTS Netball – Well Being and Engagement Lead
• AIS Mental Fitness Program Ambassador 2022
• Former Australian Water Polo Representative 2005-2011

Blake McLean is a Senior Lecturer in Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation and Director of the post-graduate High Performance Sport program. Blake’s early passion for sport led him down the path of studying Human Movement Studies (now re-named Sport and Exercise Science) at UTS.

Since finishing his undergraduate studies at UTS, Blake has spent 15 years working in the areas of sports science and strength and conditioning in high-performance departments within the AFL, NRL, NBA and USA collegiate sport. His early roles in sport involved a lot of coaching, but in recent years his work has focused more on Performance Science, including a heavy focus on how industry-embedded research can directly impact the quality of programs delivered to elite athletes.

He is involved in a number of international industry research collaborations, aiming to develop best practice human performance models and support evidence-led decision-making in the pursuit of optimal health and performance for team sport athletes.

Blake’s discussion at this symposium will specifically be focusing on the partnership with UTS and the Oklahoma City Thunder National Basketball Team.

Patrick is a sports physiotherapist with over 30 years of experience in the assessment and management of musculoskeletal injury in elite athletes. He has had long-term appointments with the Australian and Indian cricket teams, and has worked with numerous professional tennis, golf, AFL and NRL athletes.

Patrick is currently the Head of Sports Science and Sports Medicine at Cricket NSW. He is currently undertaking a PhD that is looking to develop effective approaches of predicting, preventing and managing lumbar spine injuries in fast bowlers through improved radiological analyses and modelling that more accurately represent the kinematics and kinetics of the lumbar spine during fast bowling.

An Accredited Exercise Physiologist since 2006, Mark has worked across many roles in the areas of fitness, strength and conditioning, clinical practice and workplace health promotion.

In 2012 Mark revamped Sanitarium’s health and wellbeing program for its ~1650 staff across Australia and New Zealand, which included the design and implementation of organisation-wide consultation, health risk and needs assessment processes, shifting the program to intervention-focused model.

Mark has worked at Fire and Rescue NSW since 2014 and is currently Team Leader Health and Fitness (full-time) and an operational firefighter (on-call) with primary rescue qualifications. His team’s work focuses on health and fitness promotion to ~7000 professional urban firefighters, with a particular focus on injury prevention in higher risk cohorts and operational environments e.g. improving movement competency and strength capacity in rescue operators, building physical/social/mental resilience through access to resources in high performance sport, heat stress mitigation strategies for structural firefighting.

Cain Slater is the Chief Operating Officer at the KARI Foundation, a non-profit and charitable organisation providing services and programs for Aboriginal peoples and communities across Australia. He is an experienced Board Director, business owner and executive leader with over 10 years of experience leading not-for-profit organisations, elite sporting as well as commercially orientated organisations. He is a talented and solutions-focused leader with a successful career in leadership roles at Souths Cares (South Sydney Rabbitohs), the National Basketball League, National Indigenous Culinary Institute and the TAFE.

Cain brings extensive experience in the area of Aboriginal employment and sports community programs with a passion for effective sports programs for Aboriginal young people. Cain has worked hard to establish and maintain strong collaborative relationships across the community, business and government sectors, ensuring continuity and efficient program delivery. Cain is an Aboriginal representative with established connections within the Indigenous community and experience in delivering successful outcomes for Aboriginal Australians and community partners.

Franco is a Professor of Sport and Exercise Medicine at UTS. He has worked across professional and elite sport, clinical research and academia over the past 25 years, and has a strong passion for enhancing research methods and processes.

Franco was the head of research at the MAPEI Sport Research Centre (Italy), which involved overseeing the Professional Cycling Team who were at the top of the International Cycling Union rankings for nine years.

Shifting to the clinical setting in 2007, Franco was a Senior Research Fellow at the Schulthess Clinic in Zurich, Switzerland. He was the Head of the Lower Limb Clinical Outcome group specifically working in the area of clinimetrics (patient-reported outcome measures) while also conducting projects on injury prevention with studies supported by the Football Medical and Research Centre (F-MARC) of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA). This period in Switzerland led to Franco working as the fitness coach of the Swiss Fencing Team (2012 to 2016) for the preparation of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Franco has 180 publications in sports science and orthopedics and has delivered many invited presentations to conferences around the world. He is a member of the editorial boards of various scientific journals including co-editor in chief of Science and Medicine in Football. He is a fellow of the European College of Sport Sciences and a member of the STORK (The Society for Transparency, Openness, and Replication in Kinesiology).