On the Wednesday of Week 9, Term 1, our North Adelaide AFL class visited the Adelaide Crows Football Club in West Lakes for a STEM experience. We were first welcomed into one of their team discussion rooms where we learned about what we would be doing for the day and were shown the GPS trackers we would be using in our physical session. We watched a video that explained how GPS trackers work and how they communicate with satellites to send back messages to the devices. We learned how fast the GPS trackers used in the AFL are compared to mobile phone GPS. We also learned about the accuracy of the GPS trackers the Adelaide Crows use and about how inaccurate phone and apple watch trackers are compared to them.
In the physical session, we were equipped with the GPS trackers and ran through high-intensity training activities such as shuttle runs, laps, a sprint drill, and a half-oval game. After the session, we travelled back inside where we gave back the trackers and met a couple of the important members from the Adelaide Crows that work on valuable aspects inside the club. We were also lucky enough to experience a tour of the club lead by AFLW player, Danielle Ponter. During the tour we got to see their gym, locker room, pools, eating and discussion areas. On the tour we also bumped into Ebony Marinoff who is a three-time AFLW premiership player. During our rest break, a few of us were also fortunate enough to see AFL player Jordan Dawson visiting the club. To end the day, we all got to see our results from the GPS trackers. The results were displayed on a screen, labelled with numbers. We all looked over results, giving us the opportunity to compare them to each other’s results, providing us the chance to see areas we are skilled in versus areas of improvement. Results included max heart rates, max speeds, time spent in each speed range, metres reached, and metres averaged per minute.
Thank you to the Adelaide Crows team for providing us with this awesome opportunity and learning experience. We thank you for allowing us to learn more about ourselves as players and as an overall team.
Written by Sophie Warnecke
