Funding boost to help young sports achievers travel costs

  • 2016-04-25
The Young Athletes Travel Subsidy provided by the State Government has received a funding boost of $500,000 to directly benefit young sports players.

The extra funding is good news for young sports stars in North Lakes, Queensland, according to Member for Murrumba Chris Whiting.

He said the result of such an injection of more funds was its ability to assist more families who need to travel long distances to enable their young children to compete in sporting events.

Whiting said the latest announcement means more funding requests from eligible applicants will now be successful, with up to $1.5m up for grabs.

The scheme is aimed at children under 18 who can apply for assistance in three categories including International Event (offering $600), National or National School Event ($400), and State or State School Event ($200).

Whitely said the funds will assist young sports achievers in realising their dreams to compete at the national, state and regional levels of their individual sports.

He said funding opportunities such as this could see young Queensland sportsmen and women one day achieve their long-term goals to be sporting heroes which, if travel costs are too great, could just be dreams written on note pads.

Netball Queensland CEO Catherine Clark agreed, saying the travel subsidy was important to families struggling to meet the cost of getting their children to major sports events.