It's hard in this country to have an East German type of program where if you're 6'3“ you go into rowing, and if you want to eat, you go into rowing. I think we have to find a way to have within a community—and that was my point earlier about the Gatineau pool—quality installations and quality infrastructure which will bring quality teachers, principals, and doctors, which will give kids a chance to experience all sorts of things. I think it's hard to do everything for everybody. There's a bit of luck sometimes: if you're tall and you have a volleyball coach and he happens to look at you, great.
One of the challenges we have within our national sporting organization is that we don't necessarily have the capacity to be everywhere. We have our coaches and we try to empower the coaches to look around. I also think the coaching community, whether it's the health, education, or sports community, needs to find a way to have a consortium so the coaches in an area can work together to do clinics or talks at schools.
I moved to Canada in 2005. I was invited back to Australia to speak to the ministry of health, ministry of education, and ministry of sport together within one room about how we bind all three of these to bring back fitness and a fit country. It was really interesting, because all three ministries were there, and the discussion was about how they are not silos but are so important together. I can tell you again that your coaches, your sporting organizations, your provincial organizations, even your private organizations will do anything to help, but sometimes we're not given the platform to go knocking on doors. It's hard for us to get into the schools, to get them to say to us, “why not” instead of “why”.