September 2000 Volume 81 Number 9 "serving the protectors"
By Brett Williams Since its August feature on track and field official, Constable Steve Tully, the Police Journal has discovered two other SA cops playing high-profile parts in the Olympic Games.

Medal Chances on the Water

To compete in the Sydney Olympic Games, Australia’s sprint-canoeist candidates first had to be selected by SA police officer, John Stallard, and his colleagues.

And Stallard - who can’t attend the Games - will face a moment of truth, when he watches the first televised coverage of his chosen athletes charging through the water at Penrith Whitewater Stadium.

“We’ll either be right or wrong (with our selections),” he says, “but the people we put on the water are the best people. We’ll always feel that we’ve made the right choices.

“I think people know that, when you go into battle, it’s entirely different. You can go into elite competition here and be fine; you can handle that pressure. Then you can go into international competition and it’s a different pressure; it affects athletes in different ways.”

Stallard, 48, is Australian Canoeing’s chairman of selectors of both male and female athletes for sprint events. And to evaluate canoeing’s elite, he has from last December to April, spent all his spare time - and his police annual leave - at training camps and regattas throughout the nation.

Canoeists compete in single, two-person and four-person boats over 500- and 1,000-metre distances. And from eight events, Stallard believes some of Australia’s 16-member squad - especially the pairs - could well leave Sydney with gold medals.

“Of the men, we’d probably have two medal chances,” he says, “and of the women - if everything goes to plan - we’ve got two medal chances as well.

“Canoeing is generally dominated by Europeans, particularly Germans and Hungarians. But there is a line of thought that they will have trouble coping with Australian conditions.

“It’s quite a demanding sport, but when it comes to the Olympics, everyone 'steps up’.”

Stallard’s foray into the sport came in the mid-’80s as support to his son, Brady, who was then canoeing at college. He qualified as a level 1 coach and assumed various roles on Canoe South Australia’s sprint committee, of which he later became chairman.

Because of his workload of the past 12 months with Olympic selections, however, he has had to suspend both his coaching duties and state canoeing commitments.

Stallard was joined on his selection panel by a co-volunteer from NSW and another official from Queensland. “The selection panel works really well,” he says. “We’ve been working together two years and really know how each other’s thinking.

“We’re reading the races and performances of athletes along similar lines. We know when we can be lighthearted and when to be serious. But when you get to the 'pointy end’ and the pressure’s on, it’s not time for fun then.

“I’ve always enjoyed it because I think we’ve always selected the best teams for Australia.”

But for Stallard, nominating elite athletes for the Olympics has had a downside: seven appeals from athletes against the selection panel’s decisions. Most of these appeals were lost when they were heard by an independent panel of two canoeing experts and a barrister.

One other reached the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which directed the selection panel to reconsider its decision.

Disappointed by the appeals, Stallard says: “I regard myself as being fair and giving everyone equal consideration. We often say on the panel: 'It’s the tail trying to wag the dog’. The tail refers to the athletes trying to select the team, rather than leaving it to the selectors.”

Stallard’s only other disappointment is that his police work commitments won’t allow him to be in Sydney for the Games. “The thing I would love to see,” he says, “is just the expression on some of the kids’ faces when they’re competing.”

Aiming Beyond World's Third Best

An SA policewoman will lead the Australian women’s Paralympic basketball team in its quest for gold in Sydney next month. Senior Constable Tracy York has endured months of financial hardship, endless travel and long periods interstate to prepare the Gliders for victory.

And as the team’s senior specialist coach, she will spend most of the next six weeks away from police work, as she runs her 12-woman team through pre-Paralympic training.

But York - who helped the Gliders to fourth place in Atlanta four years ago - is already convinced her charges can beat long-time rivals, Canada (ranked first in the world) and second-ranked USA.

“Canada just came out for a five-test series with us in June,” she says. “We hadn’t beaten Canada in 10 years and they hadn’t lost a game in eight, but we won that series, 3-2. It certainly is an indication that we’ve improved, and that we are around the mark.”

Nonetheless, York, 36, hasn’t been drawn into complacency by either her team’s positive signs, or its third-in-the-world ranking. Instead, she has intensified the Gliders’ training regime, and is now with the team in Warm Springs, Atlanta for a pre-Games tournament of the world’s seven highest-ranked teams.

“I think everybody’s realizing that it (the Games) is just around the corner,” she says. “Now, they’re all competing for court time, and that competition among each other is good.”

York is the Australian Paralympic committee’s highest accredited female coach (level 3), and a three-time winner of the Basketball Association of SA’s Junior Female Coach of the Year award. And for the wheelchair-bound, she in no way modifies the hard-line coaching style she employs with able-bodied athletes.

“I like to have good sessions,” she says, “and I figure we might as well do it properly and leave exhausted. That’s what we’re there for, so I’m pretty 'straight-up’. I’m fair, but I just like things done properly.

“They (the athletes) actually come up after a session - if I’ve been tough on them - and say: 'That was good. Thanks for that’.”

York says her players - most of whom are Sydney- and Melbourne-based - demand no special treatment. Their demand suits York, who treats them simply as basketball players - not disabled sportswomen.

She insists that scarcely any difference exists between her work with disabled athletes and coaching the able-bodied.

“The only difference is, the athletes we coach in able-bodied basketball have generally been playing for a lot of years,” she explains, “whereas the wheelchair athletes are generally playing because they’ve ended up in a wheelchair.

“They have no basketball background, so you’re teaching them the game from scratch. It’s a whole new perspective for them.”

And York - who has coached many able-bodied teams - disagrees with those who suggest disabled athletes are better trained by disabled coaches.

“Basketball started as an able-bodied sport,” she says. “We’re bringing a lot of expertise from the able-bodied world - (training) drills, and a lot of things that can only improve their game.”

And York’s views are supported by her impressive list of credentials. In 1992, she took a year’s leave from SAPOL to undertake a basketball coaching scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra.

She has spent the past 10 years as a state junior coach for the BASA, and coached both male and female athletes with the SA Sports Institute. A level 1 strength and conditioning coach, she trains under-16 boys once a week and, with an under-20 women’s squad, enjoyed victory at the Australian junior basketball championships in Perth last February.

At Basketball Australia’s national junior awards, York won Australian Female Coach of the Year for 1999-2000.

She joined the Gliders as an assistant coach in 1995 after she responded to an advertisement. Now, to coach the team through its monthly interstate training camps and tours, York uses all her police annual leave and days off duty. Her role has always been - and remains - unpaid.

She sometimes feels the pressure of combining full-time police work with coaching. “I’ll go away,” she says, “come back late on a Sunday night, and then I’m back at work on the Monday, so it keeps me very busy.

“I’ve basically had to get a day-shift position so I’m available to go to the camps. You drop the shiftwork and, financially, it’s a strain.”

York enjoys her work as an operational safety training instructor at Fort Largs. But with the Games now only weeks away, her thoughts are dominated by game plans, strategies and, of course, winning.

“(I’m) very committed,” she says, “and it’s on everyone’s mind a lot now. At the end of the day, you want 100 per cent. If you’ve won, that’s great. If you haven’t, hopefully it’s because the other team has been better, and not because you’ve let yourself down.”

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