In the early 1980s he was one of Australia's top sprinters, with a personal best of 10.3sec over 100m -which at the time, put him right at the peak of WA's best sprinters. Unfortunately, leg injuries took their toll and he never fulfilled his potential in national competition. Dr Tester teamed up with Dr Rouse, the current director of health service statistics and epidemiology at WA's Health Department, to examine the problem of teenage hopelessness. I thought basketball was a great medium for communicating with children. It has gender equity, every school has a basketball court, it has a high profile and we had support from Kerry Stokes, the owner of the Wildcats.
Basketball also uses large balls.
When you are teaching motion skills you always start with large balls. Mike Ellis was someone we brought into the program early on. He has been a terrific supporter of what we are doing. After a while we expanded the sports and brought in several female all-rounders. They had the program, they had some sports people, but they wanted a better way of identifying the youth than just asking class teachers, who tended to select children who were not performing academically.