Netball Victoria’s new Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator Mitch Gourley does not just believe in the power of sport as an agent for change and vehicle for equality, he has experienced its positive effects in an intensely personal way.
The triple Paralympian alpine skier and former world champion was born a congenital amputee, but has forged a decorated 13-year competitive career that delivered a bronze medal as recently as January’s World Para Alpine Skiing Championships in Slovenia.
For the past five years, Gourley has also been his sport’s athlete representative to the International Paralympic Committee and World Para-Alpine Skiing governing body, honing his management skills by chairing an advisory group of 12 athletes worldwide.
So when the 28-year-old finished the last winter season with a broken wrist and the desire to gain some broader industry experience, a part-time role with Netball Victoria appealed as the ideal fit.
“For me, sport has always been a vehicle for me to be equal, and the place where I feel like I belong,’’ Gourley says.
“So it doesn’t matter what your background is, what your gender is, whether you have a disability on the sporting field – or, in our case, on the netball court – sport has this transformative power so that everybody can be equal and everyone can belong.
“That is something that has shaped my life and is therefore something that I would like to be involved with.’’
With fellow coordinator Sarah Last, the pair’s diversity and inclusion focus includes Indigenous Victorians, the LGBTQI and culturally and linguistically diverse communities , seniors, and netballers with a disability.
One of Gourley’s duties will be to manage the Victorian All Abilities team to compete for the Marie Little OAM Shield – Netball Australia’s national championship for women with an intellectual disability – later this year.
The team of 10 plus four development athletes will again be coached by Naomi Linossier and her assistant Emma Ryde, the Victorian Fury shooter recently named MVP of the Deakin University Australian Netball League.
‘‘Our predominant role is to reduce the barriers on both our end and on the participant end to help people to experience netball and all the positive things that go with the sport – in terms of developing their social skills, their ability to work as a team, as well as all of those community building pieces around belonging,’’ Gourley says.
“Netball has obviously done significant work with women and girls beyond a lot of sports, they’ve been ahead of the game, and it’s building on that to become as diverse and inclusive as we can with all of our offerings: people with a disability, and people with varying backgrounds who might not have experienced netball.’’
Gourley laughingly confesses to being a “netball newbie” himself; his closest connection having been passing encounters with various generations of Melbourne Vixens players during his own decade-plus association as a scholarship holder at the Victorian Institute of Sport.
“I think I did a couple of PE classes in primary school, so that’s about it for me and netball!’’ he says. “But I guess I was attracted to the role because of the good that Netball Victoria does in the community, providing a safe space and a place where people can go and be included and involved in sport.’’
Gourley’s background in high performance sport is one element he brings to the position he started in May, but he believes there are other crossovers.
“There is a level of shared experience between anyone that has felt excluded in some way, shape or form, and tackling that systematically and at the source is something that has flow-on effects to all those other groups,’’ he says.
“So if we can develop a strategy, and also a culture, of being as diverse and accepting and inclusive as possible as a sport, then that can benefit all of the spaces that I work in, including disability.’’
Yet Gourley’s own plans do not include signing up for a mixed or men’s team any time soon. “I think in the first week I was here at Netball Vic there was a broken leg and two broken arms in the office and they were all netball-related. So I might stick to skiing downhill at 100kmh. It seems safer!’’
Written by Linda Pearce
