Gordon Young Scholarship

The 2024 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Megan Moshovelis for her Honours project titled, "Assessment of Female Cricket Fast-Bowling Technique Using Discrete Classifications and Functional Data Analysis".

Fast-bowling is an essential skill in cricket, in which fast bowlers hurl the ball down the pitch with a straight-armed, overarm motion towards the batter as fast as possible. Currently, fast-bowling literature groups athletes with similar bowling techniques based on the value of biomechanical variables at three key timepoints in the action (back foot contact, front foot contact, and ball release). The simplicity of quantifying body positions at discrete points has made discrete analysis the primary choice for biomechanical analysis of the fast-bowling action, however this approach results in a large amount of information between the discrete points being discarded. Accordingly, the aim of this thesis was to explore the use of functional data analysis (FDA) to analyse the fast-bowling action and compare functional and discrete methods of classification. To fulfil these objectives, a literature review exploring current uses of functional data analysis in biomechanics was undertaken, as well as an exploratory methodological study exploring some possible uses of FDA to analyse the fast-bowling action. The results of this thesis indicate that FDA distinguishes between movement styles with a higher sensitivity than discrete classification systems, and supports the use of FDA in future research examining the fast-bowling action. I am incredibly grateful to have received the Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship, which has facilitated a high degree of dedication to my research and helped me produce a thesis that I am extremely proud of.

The 2022 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Isabel McGillivray for her Honours project titled, “The Relationship Between Physical Attributes and Return of Serve Performance in High-Performance Youth Tennis Players”.

The return of serve (RoS) is the first shot of the receiver, making it one of the most frequent and outcome-determining strokes in tennis. Yet despite its importance, a paucity of research exists regarding the relationship between physical attributes and RoS success, leaving strength and conditioning coaches to prepare their athletes for this stroke based on anecdotal evidence alone. Accordingly, the aim of this thesis was to investigate the relationship between certain physical attributes - including anthropometry, reaction time, motor coordination, strength and lower-body power - with RoS speed and accuracy in high-performance youth tennis players. This research identified strong associations between RoS performance and anthropometric variables, maturity status, strength and lower-body power outcomes. Accordingly, strength and conditioning practitioners attempting to assist in optimising RoS performance should aim to prioritise the development of strength and power outcomes, whilst also acknowledging the role of anthropometric qualities in the development process. I am extremely grateful to have received the Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship which helped me produce a thesis that I am incredibly proud of. 

The 2021 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Tijana Sharp for her Honours project titled, "High-Intensity Multi-Modal Training".

High-Intensity Multimodal Training (HIMT) is an emerging training mode that combines aerobic and resistance training throughout a single exercise session. Current research highlights a lack of an operational definition that encompasses the breadth of styles of HIMT that exist in the literature and real-world health and fitness settings. Additionally, the inability to control, monitor and prescribe training load makes comparisons to other concurrent training modes difficult. Due to these limitations, the current understanding of the chronic effects of HIMT on aerobic and muscular fitness remains unclear. Therefore, the primary purpose of this dissertation was to examine the chronic effects of HIMT participation on aerobic and muscular fitness in healthy populations compared to other combined training methods. Furthermore, one of many proposed reasons for the growing popularity of HIMT may be associated with positive subjective responses to exercise, namely exercise enjoyment. However, this association is not yet clear. Thus, this dissertation also aimed to observe the subjective response to exercise in current and previous HIMT participants and identify factors that may underlie exercise enjoyment and motivation. To fulfil these objectives, two separate studies (i.e., systematic review and exploratory cross-sectional survey) were undertaken. Findings of this thesis suggest HIMT provides an attractive method of promoting aerobic and muscular fitness as well as positive subjective responses to exercise.

The Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship facilitated a high degree of dedication to my studies, allowing me to produce a thesis which I am extremely proud of. I am incredibly grateful to have received this scholarship.

The 2020 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to two recipients: Ewan Clements & Emma Petancevski

The 2020 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Ewan Clements for his Honours thesis titled “The Type and Extent of Travel for Professional Footballers Undertaking National Team Duties”. This thesis aimed to address the lack of information regarding the travel demands of international footballers by analysing the full range of flights performed by Football Australia’s senior men’s national team players across a two-year period. Additionally, this study aimed to identify the manner in which travel demands may differ between Australian national team players located at different clubs across the world. For international footballers, travel between club and national teams has often been recognised as an important concern due to the potential negative effects of circadian misalignment, jet lag, and travel fatigue on preparation and performance. Such concerns are particularly prominent in football due to the highly congested nature of fixtures and the short turnaround that often exists between club and national team matches. However, the issue of travel is complex, and the extent of its influence is highly dependent on the details of travel performed. As such, in order to reduce the cost of travel on an athlete, detailed understanding of the travel demands performed by athletes is required.  The findings of this study will help to better inform travel management strategies and provide context for future research focused on improving the outcomes of international footballers when travelling to and from respective national teams.

The 2020 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Emma Petancevski for her honours project titled, “The effect of augmented feedback on the performance and learning of gross motor and sport-specific skills”.  Augmented feedback, or extrinsic feedback, is information provided to the learner from an external source.  During the performance of sporting skills, it is common for coaches and practitioners to provide the learner or athlete with feedback as a method to improve their performance.  When providing augmented feedback, there are numerous factors which must be considered, such as the feedback modality (e.g. video or verbal feedback), how frequently the feedback is provided, and when the feedback is administered (e.g. concurrently or terminally).  However, there are currently no guidelines for practitioners which specifically address how to best implement augmented feedback interventions for the performance and learning of gross motor and sport-specific skills.  As such, the thesis aimed to critically evaluate the results of studies which examined the effects of different augmented feedback interventions on the performance and learning of gross motor and sport-specific skills in a healthy adult population. 

The findings identified that providing some form of augmented feedback to learners can induce a positive effect on the performance and learning of gross motor and sport-specific skills.  Additionally, there was support for the use of varying feedback frequencies and providing feedback both concurrently and terminally.  Due to the evidence providing support for varying features of augmented feedback interventions, specific guidelines could not be generated.  However, it provides the opportunity for future research to obtain a more robust understanding of how different factors of augmented feedback influence the performance and learning of sporting skills.  

The Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Georgia Brown for her Honours project titled “Insights into the sleep and physical activity behaviour of adolescent academy football players across the football calendar”. Adolescent athletes, including football players, are a group at high-risk of experiencing poor sleep, primarily attributed to the contextual challenges faced as being both an adolescent (e.g. delayed circadian rhythm, use of electronic devices, school start times and caffeine use affecting sleep) and an athlete (e.g. psychosocial pressure from coaches, parents and competitors affecting sleep). This poses risks to their motor learning, growth and development, muscular damage repair, academic and athletic performance.

Georgia’s thesis encompassed two studies. The primary aim of the first study was to examine the relationship between sleep quantity and quality parameters, physical activity levels and perceived well-being during different phases of the year (school vs. holidays, early season vs. late season) in adolescent academy football players. An additional aim of this study was to assess whether there was a difference in the aforementioned factors between players attending sport high schools and players attending regular high schools. The second study aimed to investigate whether differences in training schedules (morning compared to evening training sessions) would affect adolescent academy football players objective sleep quantity and quality.

The findings may help to inform coaches, academies and sport schools’ sleep education strategies as well as training schedule decisions, aimed towards enhancing adolescent athletes’ sleep, health behaviour and athletic performance.

The Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Morrie Toum for his Honours project titled “The Confounding Effect of Biological Maturity on Talent Identification and Selection within Youth Australian Football”. The thesis aimed to address the extent to which biological maturity influences the performance of youth Australian Footballers within a multidimensional testing protocol. Australian Football is a multidimensional sport which requires numerous physical and technical qualities to perform at a high level. Additionally, previous literature has highlighted the strong relationship between biological maturity and performance in measures of physical fitness and anthropometry. Due to this clear association, talent identification personnel are faced with the challenge of distinguishing between athletes of sporting potential. Early maturers who are typically taller, heavier and perform strongly in measures of strength, speed and power will be at an advantage to their later maturing counterparts. However, these differences in biological development eventually become more homogenous over time, as physical differences between early and late maturers become less evident in older age youth cohorts. Moreover, certain studies in numerous team sports have observed that differences in technical performance between early and late maturers are not as prominent as those of physical fitness. Interestingly, late maturers were sometimes found to outperform early maturers in these assessments. Nonetheless, talent personnel may make the common error in determining talent within a younger adolescent cohort based on measures of physical fitness and anthropometry, thus deselecting late maturing athletes in the process. This may potentially lead to a decrease in the quality of the talent pool, ultimately reducing the effectiveness of a talent identification program.

Therefore, by incorporating a multidimensional testing protocol, a more comprehensive approach to the complex relationship between biological maturity and Australian Football can be achieved. The measures that were included within this testing battery were age-predicted peak height velocity (measure of maturity), anthropometry, physical fitness, motor competence, perceptual-cognitive performance and small-sided match involvements. The aim of the research was to better inform coaches, trainers and talent staff on the importance of fostering the concepts of long-term potential and improvement rather than current performance. By doing so, high-level youth academies improve the likelihood of maintaining a high quality talent pool in the future.

The 2017 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to two recipients: Patrick Turner & William Sheehan

The 2017 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Patrick Turner for his Honours project titled “The Development and Validation of a Novel Decision-Making Assessment for Youth Australian Football”. Patrick’s thesis aimed to address the lack of valid assessments available to measure the decision-making ability of youth Australian Football players for talent identification purposes. In particular, Patrick’s study measured decision-making ability by assessing anticipation time, response time, performance time and skill accuracy within an Australian Football specific task. Patrick’s research was unique in that it was the first study to couple a video-based perceptual-cognitive task with motor skill execution in Australian Football as well as examine the importance of decision-making skill for the career progression of talent-identified youth players.

The 2017 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was also awarded to William Sheehan who investigated the relationship between a range of neuromechanical variables in the lower- and upper-body and golf performance. Participants were assessed for individual muscle stiffness, flexibility, power and maximal isometric strength. Furthermore, golf performance was determined by handicap and club head speed. Club head speed demonstrated positive relationships with lower body stiffness measures and power while strength and flexibility measures were not related to performance. Higher levels of lower-body stiffness and power output appear to be beneficial for generating superior club head speed. A stiffer system may reduce the time needed to remove the “slack” from the series elastic component therefore, reducing electromechanical delay and enhancing rate of force development. The large positive association with rate of force development suggests that increasing this component, along with power production may be superior focal components for training in golfers due to the short duration of the downswing.

 Findings may aid training implementation and improve ability as has been demonstrated in other contexts. If appropriately applied in a golfing context, this may improve performance leading to an increase in participation, enjoyment and adherence, with a plethora of associated mental and physical health benefits resulting from participation in the game. The current project closely aligns with Gordon Young’s vision as he too was heavily involved in promoting and developing fitness programs in a way that employed innovation, creativity, and hard work. Utilising these principles, he managed to create a positive environment in multiple forms of physical activity which encouraged widespread participation and social interaction. The Gordon Young scholarship allowed me to pursue my study ambitions and consequently contribute knowledge that will hopefully allow fellow golfers to reach heightened levels of satisfaction. 

The 2016 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Greg Joachim for his doctoral research in the area of sport development. Greg’s project aims to adapt a conceptual model of Design Thinking to the sport management context in order to maximize the social outcomes of youth sport programs in Australia. Design Thinking empowers practitioners to develop innovative designs of services and the social spaces in which those services are delivered. In a sport management context, this will result in local stakeholders developing new – or tweaking existing – sport programs within the constraints of local contexts. Developed in this way, these programs will keep the holistic development of each young athlete as the primary focus and end goal.

In 2015, the Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to two recipients: Veronica Lo Presti & Judd Kalkhoven.

The 2015 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Veronica Lo Presti for her Doctoral project titled ‘Universal Design in Sport: a catalyst for social inclusion?’. Veronica’s research investigates the dynamics of social inclusion in the planning, organisation and operations of the Rio 2016’s volunteer program. It does this to examine the Universal Design of the Rio2016’s volunteer program through the analysis of the practices performed by those participating to it. The intent is to fill the gap between organizational ‘promises’ and practices of social inclusion. Findings could inform future Games organising committees’ planning and designing of social inclusion practices in future sporting events. Veronica is currently in Rio de Janeiro to collect data at the Olympic and Paralympic Games in which she is volunteering.

The 2015 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded Judd Kalkhoven for his Honour’s project titled “The relationship between mechanical stiffness and athletic performance markers in sub-elite soccer players”. Judd’s thesis aimed to clarify the role of the stiffness/elastic properties of the human body in athletic performance. Specifically, Judd’s research assessed both vertical stiffness and the stiffness of individual musculature in relation to a range of athletic performance tests including strength, sprint and jumping assessments. Judd’s study was unique in that it was the first study to assess the stiffness of specific leg musculature located above the knee as it relates to athletic performance.

The 2014 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Marissa Banu-Lawrence for her Honours thesis titled “Searching for a Voice: Women and Leadership Development in Australian Sport Organisations”. Marissa’s work has sought to address the growing interest in gender diversity and the leadership development of women within Australian sport organisations. The research focused on exploring gendered processes within stakeholders of the Australian sport industry, and to uncover its impact on the leadership development of women. The study has contributed to expanding our knowledge of the current gender strategies and leadership development practices within sport industry stakeholders. The study has implications for current practice, highlighting the potential for cross-organisational knowledge sharing and learning between sport industry stakeholders.

The 2013 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Val Chan for her Honours project. Val's project investigated the utilisation of compression garments as a recovery intervention from physical work and exercise. The primary aim of the project was to examine the effectiveness of compression garments as a recovery tool, with a view to improving exercise performance and participatory capacity on subsequent days. A range of physiological and neuromechanical assessments were conducted, including blood markers of inflammation, muscle size, muscle strength, muscle stiffness, cardiovascular fitness and perceptual responses. In addition to this, Val has a personal allegiance to Gordon Young's vision of getting more people, more active, more often and promoting active life learning through her work with NSW Department of Sport and Recreation camps.

The 2012 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Mitchell Smith. Mitchell is a Ph.D. student investigating the link between the mood and performance of team sport athletes. His research will focus mental fatigue and the ways it affects an athlete’s ability to perform skilled movements and make fast and accurate decisions. The purpose of Mitchell's research is to enable athletes to prepare and train both their brains and their bodies for optimum performance.

Melissa Penn was awarded the 2011 Gordon Young Scholarship for her Honours thesis titled, “Biomechanical differences in shots for accuracy and power when batting in women’s cricket”. Melissa investigated the technique differences in elite female cricketers when their intention was to hit powerfully compared to accurately. She received first class honours and has since gained employment with the Australian Institute of Sport as a biomechanist.

In 2010 the Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Peter Fernley. Peter is enrolled in a Masters Degree by Research in the School and his thesis will investigate “The relative age effect in junior team sports: implications for talent development programs in Australia”. The purpose of his study is to provide evidence that will inform policy makers of the flaws in the current sporting system and contribute to improved sporting and recreation programs for teenagers. Peter is a teacher by profession and has spent the last two decades working to promote the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, regular exercise and recreation in adolescents.

The 2009 Gordon Young Memorial Scholarship was awarded to Silke Motschiedler. Congratulations to Silke on completing her thesis “The influence of exercise program structure on motivation and adherence” and achieving first class honours.