Taranaki sprinter Zoe Hobbs says any sport is a good sport

Zoe Hobbs features in the Good Sports video, launched by Sport Taranaki.

Record-breaking Taranaki sprint champion Zoe Hobbs is helping foster healthy attitudes to youth sport.

The 25-year-old features in a Good Sports video, launched by Sport Taranaki with the aim to help parents. She has had a successful start to the year. Competing in her favoured 100-metre event, she shaved 0.01 off a second from her Oceania record at the New Zealand Track and Field Championships in Wellington.

Just days later she created history at the Sydney Track Classic, running 10.97 seconds and clocking the fastest time run by a woman in Australia.

Zoe grew up on a farm in the Stratford area and her parents Grant and Dorothy encouraged her to have fun in all her sports.

She says as a child she loved giving everything a go - getting stuck into netball, basketball, gymnastics and volleyball along with her running, and her parents supported her to try as many sports as she liked.

“When I started picking up athletics wins as a girl, I remember a coach wanting to drop other sports and focus on athletics. I’m very lucky that Dad basically said, ‘no she can do whatever sport she wants for as long as she wants, she’s only 11 years old, she should be having fun’. I’m so grateful that he, and my mum, allowed me to have that freedom in sports.”

Zoe says mixing things up helped keep the pressure off her and stopped things from getting too serious well before they needed to.

“There was never, ever that pressure from their end to continue with the sport if I didn’t like it or find value in it... that is what allowed me to thrive in the sport. I don’t know if I would still be doing athletics now if I specialised early.”

Sport New Zealand development consultant Kelly Curr says keeping young people in sports was a challenge that parents played a large part in.

“I’d like to thank sporting parents for their efforts.”

Sport Taranaki coaching adviser Guy Honnor says the feedback from talented young athletes in the Future Champions programme showed that positive parental support was vital.

“The top three attributes of supportive parents they cited were assistance with travel to practice or games, just being there supporting and telling their child they love watching them play.”