Kumul and Hunters five-eight, Ase Boas has been compelled to push for greater career awareness for national athletes.
After attending an Athlete Career Education course this week, Boas strongly recommends the course be pumped out to national athletes in other codes as well in the country.
The course was co-hosted by High Performance – PNG Sports Foundation, Cricket PNG and International Cricket Council,
“This is a very good course and would have been great if all other national athletes from other codes attended.
“Like most of us playing at the national level, we are bound to lose our form one day.
“One day we might not play to the level expected of us by the management or in the code.
“This awareness that I attended is very vital for our personal lives as well as we have a life after sport,” said Boas.
Boas said as national icons in the country at the moment, athletes cannot go back to the village and act as ordinary people.
He said they need to make something of their lives now while they are still active and young.
Boas recommended that such career awareness programs be carried out in the villages because most athletes in the country today come from a rural setting where they depend on sports to get them somewhere in life when the education systems fails them.
Course speaker and former New Zealand and Sri Lankan cricketer, Sanj Silva explained to Boas the explanation that national athletes to need find an interest in life while playing sports so that they have something to fall back on when they leave sport.
Silva added that athletes leave sport for three main reasons either through a drop in form, retirement or injury, but it is mostly because of injury and form.
Silva is currently the National Personal Development Manager for New Zealand’s national sporting teams including the All Blacks.
He was here in the country to talk on career opportunities for Athletes after sports.