AFL based school in Wangarrata

The Academy keen to establish a campus with its unique curriculum in the rural city.

The Academy has identified Wangaratta as a suitable region to open another AFL based school curriculum campus in February 2021.

Currently operating in Essendon and Geelong, The Academy is a full time education program that provides an alternative to standard year 11 and 12 schooling with a contextualised curriculum that is centred around AFL.

The Academy’s curriculum is based off the VCAL system, while also including a Certificate III in Sports and Recreation program.

Co-founded by former Richmond star Alex Rance and Wangaratta local Luke Surace, the pair sought to give students an opportunity to succeed if school wasn’t for them.

The term ‘AFL based curriculum’ means that the school has a theory element about football drills and why those drills are used, which links into the sports and recreation side.

When looking at the literacy side of the VCAL program, instead of studying content such as Shakespeare, the students might study the Essendon supplement scandal or racism in sport.

While the numeracy side will look at breaking down AFL players’ GPS data which includes mean median and mode.

Rance told the Wangaratta Chronicle that his decision to start the initiative was based off his own experiences in his draft year.

“I was looking to get drafted and I was on the cusp of being one of those that didn’t quite make it and was going to be turfed out into the world.” Rance said.

“I was battling my way through and was thinking what am I going to have if it didn’t turn out the way I had hoped? And to be honest I wouldn’t have had anything.

“It was hard to get an apprenticeship or a degree while playing football because it’s a full time job too, so I wanted to create almost like a college system you would see in America for the American sports which give athletes other credentials.”

Rance said he saw many fellow AFL footballers who had not quite made it and struggled in the real world.

“I saw all of these guys go in and out of the system with not much understanding of what they were going to do and who they were, which is where we developed our curriculum,” he said.

The Academy is not strictly for those who are going to be drafted, but for anybody who feels they would benefit from the alternative education.

“We had a lot of students come to us and say they probably weren’t going to get drafted but football was their passion and wanted to be involved,” Rance said.

“We sort of pivoted from being this high performance school where it was only going to be the top draft picks and talented juniors to being an engagement tool for anyone that chose to be involved.”

The Essendon campus is at its full capacity of 50 students, while Geelong had 16 students in its first year.

Rance said the decision to bring the program to Wangaratta was due to the region’s passion for sports.

“The North East has always been such a good recruiting space for AFL football,” he said.

“It’s also a football mad area so to be able to combine that with education and re-engage youth back into their education is a big thing for us.

“If we could change negative cultural habits of country areas and put that more into football and education and upskilling yourself then we thought this was a great opportunity.”

The Academy will have its own specific campus and looking at basing themselves at the Barr Reserve precinct.

The precinct will allow the school to utilise the recreational centre for strength and conditioning staff and the ovals for football, while also finding a suitable space for classroom and learning.

Rance said the biggest highlights comes from the students who graduate.

“It’s great to look at past students who probably weren’t going to finish school but are now going to university,” he said.

“We had five students last year get accepted into university which was awesome.

“There’s also the other side where there are students who were seen as the ‘dumb jock’ at school and we were able to give them a bit of a purpose and make them realise the value they had.”

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