KidSport gives life lessons a bounce
Twice a week, St Andrew's Grammar student Tiana Grmusa hits the mats and trampolines at Star-Mites Gym Sports.
The autistic girl is rarely happier than when practising her growing repertoire of tricks on the trampolines in Morley.
She is one of many special needs children at Star-Mites who benefit from $200 vouchers distributed through the State Government's KidSport program.
"We learn frontsaults, backsaults, straddle jumps, pike jumps, front drops, back drops, tuck jumps," Tiana said.
"It's fun because you can teach other kids the thing you've done."
KidSport is not reserved for parents of special needs children, but given the associated medical costs, they can often use the help.
Tiana's mother Kristy is a coach at Star-Mites and has seen how valuable the program is to help the 20-plus special needs children involved develop.
"We tailor the programs for each child, so basically anyone can do it," she said. "One little girl had no body movement or speech, so we took her out of her wheelchair, held her bodyweight and did all the jumping.
"We had another boy who was blind, autistic and epileptic, so we had to hold his hand and do whatever we could. Once he started laughing, he couldn't stop."
Sport Minister Mia Davies said KidSport had helped more than 44,000 children, including almost 3000 with disabilities, and would continue with research showing active children learnt better.
