Saint Stephen’s College maintains a strong commitment to Sport as an important part of a complete educational experience. Our objectives are ambitious. Through sport, we seek to foster healthy attitudes towards play and encourage an ethic of hard work while encouraging all students to strive to achieve their personal best.
The College offers a wide range of sporting opportunities and has a rich history of achievements including multiple premiership winning teams and individuals who have represented their nation on the world stage.
Inter-House Sport
Inter-house Sport forms an important part of life at the College. Each student is allocated to a ‘House’ on commencement at the College with opportunities to compete for their House in sports carnivals throughout the year including Cross-Country, Athletics and Swimming. The Inter-house Carnivals serve as part of the selection process for students who represent Saint Stephen’s College at Inter-School Carnivals.
Our House system is incredibly spirited and provides a wonderful opportunity for students to connect across Year groups and compete with great camaraderie, sportsmanship and fervour.
Inter-School Sport
Saint Stephen’s College is a member of the Associated Private Schools (APS), which is a cluster of eight Gold Coast independent schools. The APS Inter-school Sports competition gives students from Year 4 onwards the opportunity to compete in their choice of sport against the other schools in the cluster.
APS team sports are categorised into two seasons, with the Swimming, Athletics and Cross-country carnivals being stand-alone events. Season one sports include Football, Hockey, Netball (girls), Rugby Union (boys), Tennis and Volleyball. Season two competitions comprise Australian Rules Football, Basketball, Cricket, Tennis (Senior School), Softball (girls) and Water Polo (Senior School).
The APS is a friendly yet competitive association that maintains the highest standards in sportsmanship, participation and performance. It also serves as part of the pathway/selection process for students who represent Saint Stephen’s at District, Regional, State and National levels. For more information on representative sports visit the South Coast School Sports website.
High Performance Pathways – Optima Sports Program
Saint Stephen’s College utilises a multifaceted approach for accommodating the needs of High Potential and Gifted (HPG) students across both the academic and sporting realms. To cater for these students, we have implemented the Optima Program which is a challenging, accelerated learning program that further extends students to help them achieve their full potential.
Saint Stephen’s College has four Optima Sports Programs across Basketball, Cricket, Soccer and Netball. We use a Long-Term Player Development Model (LTDP) and structure our sporting programs around this model to help our student athletes develop and achieve their short and long-term goals. The areas of focus in the LTDP Model are speed, strength, stamina, skills and suppleness. Our programs are designed to target these specific areas at specific times to ensure that students can develop their overall athletic ability.
Students in each program have one compulsory session in speed and agility, strength and conditioning and a field session in their chosen sport every week. Each session is tailored for student needs and abilities by our expert staff. Students are also exposed to nutrition in sport, high performance training, recovery and injury prevention and management through various experiences.
The goal of our Optima Programs is to support the individual success of students through selection in representative teams as well as team success through APS sport and other school-based competitions.
Other Sporting Opportunities
Strength and Conditioning
Interested students can use the College gym under the guidance of our Strength and Conditioning Coach, Liam Pedge. The gym is open before and after school on most days and offers students the opportunity to have individualised programs tailored to help them achieve their goals.
Runners Club
During Terms One and Term Two, students in Years 4 to 12 can join the College Runners Club which coincides with the Cross-Country season. The Runners Club meets every Tuesday and Thursday morning from 6.50am and caters for students of all abilities and levels of experience. Students in any of the Optima programs are automatically a part of the Runners Club. Breakfast is provided after each session for a gold coin donation.
To learn more about what Saint Stephen’s College has to offer, download a Prospectus or book a personal tour.
