Perseverance and Resilience

This week in iServi News we are focusing on Resilience and Perseverance. We asked two members of our community to reflect on how these important elements of our College pastoral framework have helped them thrive during challenging times.

Student Spotlight – Alessandro Circati (SA3)

Year 10 student Alessandro Circati is a talented soccer player, and balances his study with his sporting commitments as a member of the Perth Glory Football Club Academy First Team.

How have the attributes of perseverance and resilience contributed to your Perth Glory training and performances?

In the pre-season we would train in some extreme heat so I was finding it hard to finish our intense training sessions, but I would always persevere through because I knew if I kept training hard I would be more successful in the future.

When I made my debut for Perth Glory, we played Floreat Athena.  Floreat were second on the ladder and we were third. This was a very important game for both myself and our club, and even though we lost I had to be resilient and bounce back.

How do you deal with your training and school and juggling those commitments? What motivates you to catch up on your school work?

After our morning training sessions at McGillivray Oval, Mt Claremont, my commitment to Perth Glory means I arrive late to first period, four days a week.

At first I found it difficult to fit both soccer and school into my schedule, but if I wanted to succeed in both I needed to be resilient and make it work.

I make sure that I catch up on schoolwork over the weekends or when I have a break in my schedule. It’s hard, but I’m committed to achieving well in both soccer and school.

Due to risk of injury, Perth Glory don’t allow me to compete in school soccer, however I want others to love soccer as much as I do. I got the chance to coach NAS soccer this year, it was a way that I could give back to the College.

Do you have a role model that motivates you to push through the tough and busy times? 

Paolo Maldini is a person that inspires me to become a professional footballer and it’s because of him that I aspire to do well every day.

Paolo Maldini is my role model. He motivates me because he used to play for my favourite team AC Milan in Italy, and is the club’s current Technical Director.

Maldini was a humble person, a good leader on and off the field, and his defensive work on the field is something that I admire to this day.

Have you had a tough experience where you thought you would give up, but persevered through? 

I personally haven’t had a bad experience however the thought of not making a team is something I carry around with me and the only way to overcome this is to try my best and persevere through my day. I have been lucky enough to play soccer in England, Spain, Sweden, Singapore and parts of Australia. These experiences have enabled me to pursue my dream of becoming a professional soccer player. In two weeks time I’ll be travelling to England and Germany to try out for a few clubs. If I am selected, the possibility of living overseas in 2020 could become a reality. Persevering and resilience are essential for my future success.

Staff Spotlight – Ms Sarah Donnelly

Servite teacher and Gaelic footballer Ms Sarah Donnelly recently competed in the Renault GAA World Games 2020.

“I like to think that if I felt something was worthwhile enough to start working on then it’s important that I see it though; not only finish it but put effort in and take pride in it.”

How did the attributes of perseverance and resilience contribute to your performance at the Renault GAA World Games?

Well resilience and perseverance are all about deciding to do something and then not giving up on it; trying, failing and then trying again. We were playing around 10 games in the space of five days so it was tough going. You have to be ready to take knocks mentally and physically and get back up throughout the week. With that many matches you aren’t going to play a great game every time and you may not even win all your matches but you have to learn to recover from that, ride the storm and come back again with a positive attitude. By grand final day we were all very sore and I was carrying a knee injury, but having worked so hard to get there and knowing a world title was one game away, it is amazing how deep you can dig to make it through.

How did you deal with not winning the competition for two years and finally being able to win this year? How did that make you feel?

Having been selected twice before for the 2015 and 2016 Australian teams, I had accepted that I probably wouldn’t get the opportunity again. I felt lucky to have been the only player to get to play in both those World Games but also disappointed that we had lost the grand finals on both occasions. Coming up to state championships last year it was in the back of my mind that World Games would be played next year but it’s not something I dwell on when playing the Australian championships. You are at those trying to represent WA and doing your best to win with them. Unfortunately we didn’t win with WA, but I did get selected to the Australian All Star team which the Australian World Games team is selected from.

I thought twice about nominating for the Australian team when selections were coming up. I knew it would be hard to get picked again, given the talent in the Eastern states, and I also did not want to lose another final in front of my family. For the same reasons I decided to go for it. I have worked for years to play Gaelic football at the highest level and as such want to continue doing that by persevering in my training. The only way to stay strong in your sport is to remain resilient and keep meeting the challenges set. I also was determined to finally win the World title and put right any shortcomings I may have had in the other years.

My parents are very supportive of me and attended the world games in Abu Dhabi in 2015 and Dublin in 2016, so they were a huge driving factor for wanting to win. To finally be able to have them watch me win the tournament in Croke Park was both a relief and a joy to me. We finally managed to win what I had set out to do and it made the hard work worthwhile. Croke Park is Ireland’s national stadium and the third largest stadium in Europe (after only Camp Nou and Wembley), so the honour of playing there only added to my determination to win.

How did perseverance and resilience support you to keep fighting and coming back?

I learnt the importance of resilience and perseverance in sport very early. I took the sport up quite late at 14 and then broke my wrist on my 15^th birthday. Less than a year later I smashed the other arm with a cast put on from my shoulder to halfway down my forearm. I had exams coming up in school and a few people said I obviously wasn’t suited to the game. I wasn’t strong enough. I remember feeling very disheartened but I got through the exams at school and thought if I can get through those with my right arm out of action I’m over the worst and can try football again.

I got back to football and trained whenever I could. I kicked around with my dad every day, but I also put in the hard running time and when I was a little older, put big hours into strength and conditioning. Without setting goals for yourself and believing something is worthwhile, I know you cannot achieve success in sport. The same thoughts have brought me through my entire time playing football and arriving in Australia seven years ago was no different. Gaelic football understandably is not always played at the same level as Ireland here but I still wanted to play at the highest level I could. That meant representing Australia at the World Games and that meant putting in a lot of work on my game to get noticed and get picked for it.

How does your experience in sport enable you to be resilient in life and work?

Everything you do follows the same principles. You carry the same resilience into general life and work. I like to think that if I felt something was worthwhile enough to start working on then it’s important that I see it though; not only finish it but put effort in and take pride in it.