Dongyun Kwon
Healesville Junior Football Club has had great success in season 2023, playing in the Outer East football competition.
The club has won the three premierships in the same season this year, something that has not happened for over 25 years.
Healesville JFC president Zach Coleman said the club benefited from significant improvement throughout the season, culminating in 3 teams making it into the grand finals.
“Last year we had 2 teams make grand finals, with our top age Under 15s saluting while our Under 16 girls fought hard but couldn’t quite get over the line,” he said.
“This year we finished with eight teams making the finals out of a possible nine. We finished the finals series with three teams advancing to the grand finals with all of them winning their premierships.
“An amazing achievement everyone associated with the club is immensely proud of.”
The Healesville JFC started the season with 11 teams, and approximately 265 kids registered to play.
This was one of the largest participation zones for the Outer East Football League and took an immense amount of coordination to allow these teams to take to the field every week.
“Hard to trace back the history and find when the club tasted this level of success, but three premierships in one season hasn’t happened for a long time and should be rightfully celebrated,” Coleman said.
U14 girls: Who would imagine that a team without a coach and enough players could win premiership?
With dramatic ups and downs, the Healesville JFC U14 girls team finally won a premiership at the end of the season.
Coach Shane Newsome said he was proud of his team after reminiscing about the season.
“Considering we weren’t going to have a team, and then suddenly making the grand final, it was quite a surprising result we are proud of,” Newsome said.
Before the beginning of the season, the U14 girls team had only a few players without a coach.
Newsome said he put his hand up to become coach and run the team.
“As a coaching coordinator, I took it upon myself to go to the president to check if we had enough players to run a team,” he said.
“Because we didn’t have a coach, I said I would take the first few training sessions and see how we’d go.
“I was afraid the girls would turn away when they came to join the team because we didn’t have a coach.”
Only six to eight girls came to the first two weeks of training although at least 12 players needed to make a team.
Newsome and his wife decided to find new teammates to secure the viability of the team.
They used all their contacts to find other girls who played any sport and tried to coax them into joining the team.
“We grew our number to 12 in the next training and 16 in the following training,” Newsome said.
“A number of Under 12 girls filled in throughout the year and we were able to have 20-21 girls on the park.”
Since the team was formed with a number of new players, the coach emphasised the mentality of being one team during the season, ‘Be the best player for the team rather than be the best player on the team’.
Not only asking the girls to be team focused, he also took the initiative by stepping back from worrying about the result of the games.
His strategy turned out to be the right one, with the girls enjoying the freedom of playing football without the stress of the result.
It enhanced the morale of the girls with close friendships and bonds throughout the team being formed.
They started to work things out by themselves to get a good playing chemistry.
“I tried to create a safe environment because if you feel safe then you would probably get the best out of yourself,” Newsome said.
“What I tried to do was create a nice, safe, friendly atmosphere at training to take the stress out of the moment and emphasise for the girls to continue to have fun and work hard for each other.
“We had a couple of pizza nights throughout the season which enabled us to bond better.”
The team had an hour and 15 minute training session once a week and a game every Sunday.
Newsome said he instigated two training sessions when they got towards the end of the year because the girls insisted on being fully prepared for the finals.
The team had to get through all the hardships from the beginning of the season.
Even after they recruited enough players, they had a few injuries unexpectedly which might have affected the team negatively.
The coach kept on reminding the girls that it might be their last game to open their eyes up and to make them give their best every moment.
Newsome kept on reminding the girls that the next game might be their last game to motivate them to apply their best at every moment.
“The girls played and made every moment count at training and in the finals,” he said.
Newsome was no stranger to success. He had been the coach of the successful U15 team since season 2022.
As a result, the team defended a 10 point lead going into the last quarter in the grand final.
The efforts they had put in throughout the season, coupled with their determination not to give up, led them to the premiership.
Grand final scores:
Belgrave: 0.1 2.1 3.2 4.2.26
Healesville: 2.0 2.1 4.6 4.6.30
Best of ground: Charlotte Lowrie
Goals: Paige Bode (2), Summer Caldicott (1), Charlotte Lowrie (1)
U15 white boys: from Failure to Success
Healesville JFC White U15 boys were not frustrated when they confronted their failure from season 2022, rather, they used it as motivation to succeed this year.
Last season’s results and some losses throughout this season motivated the whole team on what they needed to work on.
The coach Michael Collins said it was his second year coaching the team and he learned from the experience of failure the year before, to win the premiership in season 2023.
“I had a big focus on getting a greater number of contributors this year,” Collins said.
“What I learned last year was we couldn’t just win games or go deep in the finals with only a small number of contributors.”
He decided to create a competitive atmosphere to draw out all potential from more boys.
“We picked players and their positions based on whoever put their best effort in during the training drills,” Collins said.
“It made everyone keep focusing during the drills and the games.
“If you have someone with similar ability under this environment, you would tend to find a way to win a little bit more which would help you with your improvement.”
With the step up to under 15s, the team also doubled the number of training days this year, attending an hour and 20 minute training session on every Monday and Thursday.
The team stepped up throughout the 2023 season despite losing two of the first three games.
“We only lost to three different teams throughout the season and went on 10 winnings streak to take out the premiership” Mr Collins said.
“We beat our eventual grand final opponent 4 times at the back end of the season, Yarra Glen JFC U15 boys, after we lost to them in round 7.”
Although the competitive environment could have derailed the team chemistry, the boys bonded solidly as a team.
A classic example of the team’s bond was to help Samuel Anderson to win the top goalkicker for the league with only a few games left before the end of the season.
“When we had about two or three games to go before the end of the season, we had already locked up a top two ladder position, which is all we needed to do because no matter what position we finished with, we were going to play against the same team,” Collins said.
“Sam was behind by a couple in the goalkicking table with 2 rounds to go, so as a team we then switched our focus to get him to win the top goalkicker.
“Other players sacrificed their games in an effort for their teammate to sit atop the goal kicking ladder.
“Sam ended up winning the title with 44 total goals thanks to the massive support from his teammates.”
The team successfully ended a season with a premiership and the top goal kicking title.
Grand final scores:
Healesville: 1.4 2.5 3.8 4.8.32
Yarra Glen: 0.0 2.1 3.2 4.3.27
Best on Ground: Samual Anderson
Goals: Jaxon Daykin (1), Logan Schelfhout (1), Casey Symonds (1), Cody Venville (1)
U16 girls: The attitude of willing to learn more and more made everything possible
The U16 girls team couldn’t be much stronger with the ambition of improvement from the girls and the detailed direction from the coaching staff.
Geoff Stock, a coach of the U16 girls team, said it was his first time being a coach for a junior team.
Although he coached many adult male teams in football and cricket, he still found it difficult to make the transition to coaching junior girls.
“This was probably the toughest coaching job I’ve ever had. They were all different, 28 young women in the team. I had to treat them respectfully as individuals,” he said.
However, he had a supportive team in team manager Danielle Mullens, assistant coach Broke Coleman and trainer Vanessa Clothier who helped him to communicate with the girls.
The girls were also willing to learn every single time they came to training which made things a little easier.
“I am very glad to have three ladies on the support team. They are all extremely helpful and helped me to relate to the girls and learn how to apply a different coaching technique required for girls football,” Stock said.
“I find it with the young girls that they are sponges. They really love information.
“They love lots of information and lots of feedback on the spot.
“Whether the feedback is positive or a learning scenario, they love to take it in with constant communication, a major key to their learning and improvement from week to week.
“They are young and get to learn every time they put a football in their hands.”
Another thing he found hard was fluctuating availability.
The team had 11 players from Worawa Aboriginal College, giving him a different number of available players depending on school period.
The Healesville junior club has been working actively with Worawa over the last two years to support their girls participating in football outside of the college. A successful partnership that has delivered many benefits for both the club and the college.
The coach said he had 12-14 girls available on some games and 24-28 girls available on other games because the players from Worawa Aboriginal College went home for the school holidays.
To deal with the big changes throughout the season, Stock had to make players flexible to understand all the positions on the ground.
“Lots of players were able to learn new positions and play in positions all over the ground to overcome this problem,” he said.
“As a result, this made our team much stronger in the second half of the season.
“We were able to deal with the injuries during the season because other players could cover up the missing positions.
“By the time we got to finals, when all the girls got back to the squad, we were very well rounded and settled on a really strong line-up for the players on the pitch with wider flexibility for the position selection.”
After the girls realised their improvement in terms of skills and flexibility, they were not overwhelmed anymore even when they faced the undefeated Mount Evelyn side on grand final day.
Grand final scores:
Mt Evelyn: 0.0 0.1 1.2 1.2.8
Healesville: 1.2 2.3 4.5 6.7.43
Best on Ground: Brylee Anderson
Goals: Brylee Anderson (2), Mia Kershaw (2), Adelaide Caldicott (1), Maddi Campbell (1)
