12 Feb 2026
The process to identify the next generation of track and field student-athletes to join Aspire Academy has concluded for another year with the Final Pre-Academy Athletics event.
More than 80 young hopefuls took part in the competition, which featured five events: a 60 metres race, an individual timed 40 metres, as well as tests to measure their throwing and jumping abilities.
The final event was part of a process that began in September to select 15 to 20 boys to join Aspire Academy later in 2026.
The event was overseen by Peter Skoumal, one of Aspire Academy’s Lead Athletics Coaches, and he outlined how they decide those with the most potential.
“This whole process began last year when we went to schools and tested over 5,000 kids, and from those, we selected about 150 to join our various Aspire Academy centres,” he explained.
“Across those three centres, they've been training with us over the last three months, where they’ve had competitions, testing, and regular training sessions.”
“It is not just outstanding physical abilities that we look for, but at this age, there can be big differences in growth and maturation between boys, so we must keep that in mind.”
“We keep them training with us for three months so we can assess their mental capacity — their engagement, motivation levels, and how coachable they are.”
“One of the biggest challenges when observing children at this age is to try and predict how their bodies will develop and change as they mature, and I don’t think anyone in the world has a perfect formula to predict that – so we do our best.
“We at Aspire Academy are fortunate to have access to tests and technology that can help us, so we take a lot of anthropometric measurements, and we also do bone X-rays (MRI) to see their bone age and predicted height.”
“Our final choices combine the objective data we have collected through testing with our subjective observations from training sessions.
“By putting all that together, we hope to select the best athletes, and honestly, I feel that every year we learn more and get better at it.”
Aspire Academy’s coaches will collate all the data they have collected and discuss their observations before deciding which of the promising youngsters will be invited to join Aspire Academy as full-time student-athletes next September.