The Park Ridge High School AFL Academy continues to nurture the best local Aussie Rules talent.
Across a range of age groups in both male and female competition the school has had numerous players picked for Met West representative duties.
AFL Academy member and year 11 student Aiden Duncan said the AFL Academy has helped him become a much better footballer.
“I’ve been apart of it for three years now and its been a great experience so far,” he said.
“Its improved my football all around, it’s helping me get to rep teams and all that too, so it’s a pretty big part of my footy.
“We train nearly every day of the week and that’s usually at a pretty high intencity.”
Though the students play on various and some times opposing club teams, Duncan said due to the daily nature of their academy work, when the time comes to represent their school and their academy, the players gel with minimal effort.
“It brings a better bind with us and creates a better team chemistry, we are all like a big family now out there on the field,” he said.
“We are going real well, we nearly beat the reigning premiers in Palm Beach Currumbin, and Helensvale who came second we almost beat them as well, we have got a pretty good team this this year, it’ll be a good year for us.
Duncan said the academy players wherever possible try to cheer on their fellow academy members in the girls teams and other age groups.
“Where we can we all support each other and if we can go to their games we do, and if they can come to ours they do, but it’s all based around our education too and that’s a ig part of it, but we’re we can support them we do,” he said.
Park Ridge State High School director of AFL Derek Berry said the academy is really proud of their achievements across the board so far this year.
“In the girls Met West, seven out of the 23 spots have all come from our academy and in the met west team there is no other academy that’s achieved that so we are pretty excited for our girls,” he said.
“We’ve had nine in before but we have always ranged between seven and nine in the teams and that’s due to the girls being really committed they do lunch time training sessions, and they’re working really hard.
“We also just had our start to the year for our academy, we’re currently ranked third in senior boys and second for senior girls in the school of excellence competition, and we’ve still got a few games to play.”
The Academy has also recently had seven of their under 15s players selected for Met West honours.
