Striving for peak performance
HELPING northern Queensland’s athletes become ultimate champions is a decadeslong passion for Wade Sinclair.
The James Cook University Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Science, Honours Co-ordinator and Elite Athlete Program Co-ordinator is the go-to person when it comes to finding out what makes the region’s sports stars tick.
“I love working with athletes, whether they’re in Under 6s or playing in a 10and-a-half million dollar team,” he said.
“I enjoy working with coaches and finding solutions when teams are stuck in a rut – all those conundrums that pop up in sport.
“We’re support staff and our job is to help coaches find a solution. If there’s anything in my experience working across different sports, I’m happy to share that with them.
“There’s no one single answer. For example, social media’s known for its armchair coaches offering advice but sometimes there might be something in that and you can try it.”
Growing up playing soccer and also active in surf life saving, the latter became a passion for Wade after moving from Bundaberg to Townsville as a teenager.
“I loved travelling over to Magnetic Island every weekend so it was an easy sport to get into,” Wade said.
“I had some great mates and really good mentors in the area and I enjoyed being out on the water.”
After a five-year stint away working in casinos, Wade returned to Townsville where he was also a surf life saving coach.
Looking to finish a commerce degree he had previously started, a chance encounter at a JCU Open Day set Wade on his future career path.
“I actually walked into the wrong room and the lady who was talking was Dr Donna O’connor, who was a Sports and Exercise Science lecturer at the time,” he said.
“As she was talking about
the degree I thought, ‘This sounds really cool’ and immediately it resonated with me because I could relate it directly to the kids that I was coaching at the time.”
After finishing his undergraduate degree and doing his Honours, Wade became a research officer at JCU in 2003, before progressing up to ranks to Associate Lecturer, Lecturer and finally, Senior Lecturer in 2020 – under the leadership of Head of Sport and Exercise Science
Associate Professor Fiona Barnett.
Wade’s talents and experience have seen him foster collaborative arrangements over several years with major sports teams, including the Townsville JCU Fire WNBL side, Surf Life Saving Australia, the National Rugby League and North Queensland Cowboys, Aspetar – Qatar’s Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Hospital and various Australian and International Universities.
Away from University, the father-of-three has also served as the Assistant Coach for the Australian Life Saving Team (2013-2016) as well as a Performance Analyst for the North Queensland Cowboys (2017-2020) and currently, the Queensland State of Origin team.
“One of my big passions is watching coaches and learning from them – everyone from the coaches who coached my daughter when she was playing Under 6 basketball through to the professional coaches in multiple sports that you see on TV as well as in real life,” Wade said.
“I try to identify what they do, how they do it and why they do it because then you can pass on that information.”
More recently, Wade heads JCU’S new Performance Science Hub, co-located with the Cowboys at the Hutchinson Builders Centre.
“While we have an elite facility, we’ve certainly got a community focus,” he said.
“We want to keep local kids local. There’s too many that have to move south to make it in their sport.
“Some of that is a given, depending on their chosen sport, but if it’s about accessibility to services that we could potentially provide at the hub, I’d rather be able to offer that here in the North.”