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As the AFLW season starts to wind down the A-League Women’s season kicks off and we have Alumni in both.  See how they are going.

AFLW

Melbourne has defeated North Melbourne to make it through to the AFLW Grand Final.  The Demons beat the Kangaroos by 17 points.  For Melbourne Libby Birch was solid in defence with 13 Disposals and AMY had a quiet day with 7 possessions but remains a tackling machine with 7 tackles on the day

Melbourne now heads to Springfield in Ipswich for the Grand Final of the AFLW against Brisbane.

Congratulations to Monique Conti who has been named the AFLW Player of the season judged by the AFLW Media with 23 votes.  Georgie Prespakis was the next best MSA Alumni finishing with 14 votes.

In the AFLW Best and Fairest award Mon Conti finished second with 19 votes, 2 behind Brisbane’s Ally Anderson in a thrilling count on Tuesday night.  Monique and Georgie were also both named in the midfield for the AFLW All Australian team. 

Football…

Naomi Chinnama started at Centre back for the Melbourne City in their 4-1 away win against Wellington.

MelindaJ Barbieri came on in the 79th minute in Adelaide United’s 1-0 win over Sydney FC.

Congratulations to Annabel Martin who has resigned with Wellington Phoenix Women’s team and MelindaJ Barbieri for signing with Adelaide United for this seasons A-Leagues Women’s competition

Polly Doran came on the field at the 90th minute to be a part of Crystal Palace’s loss to Charlton 2-1.

Volleyball

 Lorenzo Pope’s Modena Volleyball in the Italian Supa League has had another win, this time over Prisma Volley 3-1.  Modena are now equal 4th on the standings.

Badminton

In the Australian Open for Badminton, Gronya Somerville was knocked out in the round of 32 in the Women’s and Mixed Doubles. 

Gridiron

MSA Alumni Adam Korsak has just set a record for the most punting yards in College Football History in Div 1 of the NCAA.  On top of that record Adam also has the following distinctions for this year,  NCAA record for NET punt, -10 punt return yards this season, 3 times captain for Rutgers football and a streak of 150 punts without a touchback. 

Taekwondo

Reba Stewart lost in the round of 32 in the 73+kgs division to Matea Kolovrat of Croatia in the Taekwondo World Championships in Mexico..

Staff Changes at MSA

Maribyrnong College and Maribyrnong Sports Academy would like to announce some staffing changes that have been made here at the academy in the past couple of weeks.

As we do with our Student Athlete’s, we encourage our staff also to strive for the best, and always look to better themselves in their career, and recently a couple of our staff have decided to do just that.

In our AFL department we have said goodbye to our head AFL coach Robbie Chancellor who has accepted a position with AFL club the GWS Giants in Sydney to be their Head of Development.  This has meant we have had to look for a new AFL Head Coach and we are pleased to announce that the role will be filled by Danny Sexton. 

Danny was coach of the Calder Cannons and Northern Knights in the TAC cup competition until 2006 when he joined St Kilda firstly as the club’s development manager, then an assistant coaching role before being announced as the Director of Coaching in 2016. Danny has also held the role of Footy Operations Manager at the Saints.

Meanwhile MSA AFL Coach & PE Teacher Hayley Gossow has accepted a role with the AFL as Head of the Girls program at the Western Jets.  Hayley will leave us shortly.

We wish both Robbie and Hayley all the best in their new roles and welcome Danny to MSA.

After the departure of our MSA Head of Strength and Conditioning, Calvin Pane to the Western Bulldogs, Todd Carlon stepped in as acting head of S & C for the second half of the year.  After a process which saw an amazing calibre of candidate apply for the position, we are proud to announce that Robert Le Guen has accepted the position of Head of Strength and Conditioning here at MSA 

Robert is qualified at the Masters level and his background includes being an athlete himself who moved from Melbourne to the USA on a College Scholarship which resulted in him being a member of a Lacrosse National Championship winning team.   Post College, Robert has worked in a variety of sports in the College system as an S&C Coach including soccer, American football, softball, baseball, track and field, basketball, golf, and tennis at both Hofstra University and the University of South Florida (both NCAA Div 1 Colleges).  

Robert has just finished working with English Premier League Club Manchester City as the Lead S&C Coach for the Youth Development Phase in its Academy program and has also worked with the English Football Association (FA) as a physical performance consultant.   We welcome Robert to MSA.

Finally, we also welcome Sara Hasani as our physiotherapist here at MSA.  Sara has been in the AFL system for the past 12 years as a physio at both St Kilda and the Western Bulldogs.

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While we didn’t have a massive amount of action in the past week for our MSA Alumni we still had some amazing results.

World Para Table Tennis

Congratulations to MSA Alumni Nathan Pellissier who represented Australia at the World Para Table Tennis Championships in Spain.  Nathan and his Mixed Doubles partner Lina Lei won a Bronze Medal – Nathan’s first medal at Worlds.   At the conclusion of the championships, Table Tennis Australia announced that our Australian team delivered their best ever results with many team members recording strong performances – Nathan had a career best as he also reached the Quarter Finals in the Singles, and Round of 16 in the Doubles. 

AFLW

North Melbourne was victorious over Richmond by 36 points to move into the preliminary final.  Monique Conti had 21 disposals and a goal for the tigers while Elle McKenzie had 19 possessions.  Both Elle and Monique were named in Richmond’s best for the game.  Meanwhile for the Kangaroos Amy Smith had 9 disposals and 6 tackles.

This week Amy Smith’s Kangaroos take on Libby Birch’s Demons for a spot in the Grand Final.  

Volleyball

Lorenzo Pope and his teammates at Modena Volleyball have jumped to 5th on the table in the Italian League after a solid 3-1 victory over Sienna.  

Taekwondo

As she continues her comeback from injury, we wish Reba Stewart good luck this week in the World Champs in Mexico.  This event is important to Reba as it gives her ranking points towards the Olympics in Paris in 2024.

Football/Soccer

Rhys Bozinovski started for Western United in their 3-2 victory over Wellington Phoenix on the weekend with Seb Pasquali’s return to the park not too far away.

Connor Metcalfe came on in the 81st minute for St Pauli FC in their 4 all draw against Karlsruher in the German Bundesliga 2.

Baseball

Congratulations to Keenan Spence who has signed with Purdue University in Indiana.  Keenan will play Baseball for the Purdue Boilermakers in the NCAA Div 1 Big 10 competition.