By JARROD POTTER
THREE Dandenong Stingrays received their Christmas presents early, with confirmation of their places in the AFL Academy’s tour of the United States of America next year.
Jacob Weitering, Gach Nyuon and Kieran Collins are part of the AFL Academy’s Level Two program and will travel to the United States on 10 January for a 12-day training camp at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.
The step up in standard with the AFL Academy players has impressed Weitering, 17, from Mt Martha, the most as every player is already at an exceptional level.
“You have to have that belief factor going from a low level club footy – and being the best there – then into Dandenong Stingrays and into this… you have to restart as everyone is as good as you,” Weitering said.
“How elite these boys are is another step up – It really does improve every facet of your game on and off the field and that you know you belong there, so that took me a little while to get into.
“The biggest thing for all the boys is the off field stuff – we can just go out on the day to play our footy, but we don’t know how the off-the-field side of it works – what food to eat, how to recover and perform consistently and that’s the main thing I’ll take out of it.”
Weitering already has a few quality pieces of experience on his football resume – after travelling to New Zealand last year as a Level One scholarship holder and playing on the MCG against the Allies before the AFL Grand Final this year, which he described as “surreal” and “a boyhood dream”.
The rangy defender has enjoyed his time at Shepley Oval and hopes next year can be another step up as Dandenong works towards getting its maiden TAC Cup premiership.
“Great experience under Craig Black the new coach – Blacky’s first year in,” Weitering said.
“New game plan and new boys so it was fantastic to play with the older boys and the boys that went through this program last year.
“I got to play with them a lot… it was a great learning curve and will be a step up later on in life – it was great to implement Blacky’s game plan… maybe go one better next year as we got knocked out in the prelim (preliminary final)… we had a pretty good year.”
The IMG Academy has trained such notable alumni as tennis stars Andre Agassi and Boris Becker as well as American NFL gridiron players Eli Manning and Cam Newton.
