WELCOME TO THE FUTURE LEARNERS PODCAST

What happens when your child trains 20 hours a week, flies overseas to get a shot in the Premier League, and still has to get a great education along the way? In this episode of the Future Learners podcast, Brett Campbell (CEO and co-founder of Euka) sits down with Melvyn Wilkes, Sporting Director and Global Operations Manager of Sunshine Coast FC, Australia's only full-time youth football academy, to talk about how young athletes are training at an elite level without losing the education behind them.

Melvyn shares the inside view of full-time academy life: 7:15 AM sport-science testing, 12:30 PM on the field, gym sessions woven through the school day, and a new international pathway sending 32 athletes a year to play in elite UK youth competitions. He also speaks plainly about what mainstream education does (and doesn't) handle well for high-performance kids, why mental load matters as much as training load, and what changed for his athletes once they switched to Euka's flexible learning model. If your child trains, performs, competes, or travels at a level that does not fit a 9-to-3 desk, this episode is for you.

Key Points:

What Euka is making possible for young athletes:

• A real education pathway for kids whose week does not fit a 9-to-3 desk
• Lessons that travel with the athlete across states, across countries, across competition calendars
• The Australian Curriculum delivered the same way regardless of where the athlete is training that month
• A partnership with Sunshine Coast FC that has unlocked Australian players competing in elite UK youth football

Why Euka students are outperforming their peers:

• "You would be shocked at how well a Euka Future Learning student performs." Quote from Melvyn, Sporting Director of Sunshine Coast FC
• Flexible timing means lessons fit around training, not the other way around, and the brain that learns is a brain that has not been worn down by a rigid timetable
• Athletes on Euka land the same Australian Curriculum outcomes as peers in mainstream school, but are visibly less stressed
• Self-paced learning builds time management as a side effect, a skill that pays off long after the playing career

Why mainstream school stops working for serious athletes:

• Rigid school timetables pile mental load on top of training load
• Moving interstate or overseas for sport resets the curriculum every time
• Even a single inflexible class can hijack a child the night before training and the day after
• Exam-condition rules are built for a 9-to-3 student, not a kid in a different city every fortnight

How the Euka and Sunshine Coast FC partnership came together:

• Sunshine Coast FC needed an education partner who could align athletes from multiple states into a single squad heading overseas
• Mainstream and distance-education models could not solve the state-to-state curriculum mismatch
• Euka's self-paced, curriculum-aligned model meant every athlete arrived in the UK on the same academic page
• The partnership now supports athletes training in Australia and competing in the UK in elite youth leagues

When this matters for your family:

• Your child is training, performing or competing at a level that needs daytime hours
• Your week already does not fit inside 9 to 3, and you are tired of forcing it
• You want the education to keep up with the sport, not the other way around
• You want your child to perform better at school, not in spite of the sport, but because of how the model is built

Australia's only full-time youth football academy: how it started

When Sunshine Coast FC went full-time in July 2020, the rest of the country thought they were mad. The pandemic had just turned the world upside down, and here was a football club on the Queensland coast tearing up the part-time academy model and committing to something nobody else in Australia was doing.

Five years later, the bet has paid off. What started with 26 student athletes in a single building has grown into 180 full-time athletes across four sporting codes (football, basketball, netball and dance) with academic tuition delivered through their partner school, Peregian Beach College. Sunshine Coast FC funds the academic side. The sporting operation funds the school. It is the only setup of its kind in the country.

For Melvyn, the model copies what works at the sharp end of European football. "We worked closely with the academic team and the principal to devise a timetable which could encompass training within the day without cutting any corners on the education," he explained. The point was never to be a school with extra footy on the side. It was to mirror Premier League youth academies, where training and learning sit beside each other from the start.

Australia as a whole has got some exceptionally talented young people, particularly in the football fraternity. We wanted to open the network up and give them an opportunity. — Melvyn Wilkes, Sunshine Coast FC

What a week at the academy actually looks like

Monday is recovery. The athletes have competed on the weekend, so the first coaching contact comes Monday afternoon. There is a strength and conditioning session during the day, but the body is the priority.

Tuesday is the heaviest day. Athletes report at 7:15 AM for sport-science testing. Heart-rate variability, thermal muscle scans, baseline data collection. The team uses platforms like Polar and Apollo Sciences to track recovery and readiness across the week. After testing, academic lessons run until lunchtime, then the athletes are on the field from 12:30 PM through to roughly 4:30 PM.

Wednesday opens with a 7:15 AM technical session on the field, then academic lessons through the middle of the day, then back on the field from mid-afternoon until 5 PM. Thursday is the "lighter" day, where the athletes report to school as normal, do academic lessons until early afternoon, then complete a final field session by 4:30 PM. Friday is a deliberate taper. One short session at midday so the body is fresh for competition on Saturday or Sunday.

"We worked closely with the academic team to devise a timetable that could encompass training within the day, without cutting any corners on the education." — Melvyn Wilkes, Sunshine Coast FC

Australian football meets the English FA: the international pathway

In 2023, Sunshine Coast FC made the call to take Australian players to where the elite youth competition actually is. Melvyn, originally from the UK and still well-connected through the football fraternity there, legally affiliated the club in the United Kingdom under the name Sunshine Coast FC UK. That gave the program access to some of the most robust youth competitions in the world at Under-16, Under-18 and Under-23 level, with a senior men's space launching soon.

The response from Australian families was enormous. 167 applications for 32 spots in last year's intake. Players came from Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Cairns, regional Queensland and even New Zealand. For an aspiring footballer in Australia, this is genuinely the closest pathway to Premier League football most kids will ever get.

It is also the moment Sunshine Coast FC ran headfirst into the problem that mainstream schooling could not solve for them: every state runs a slightly different version of the Australian Curriculum, and Year 11 to Year 12 progression rules differ from one state to the next. When you are recruiting 32 athletes from five states and trying to send them to the UK as a single squad, that fragmentation makes coordination almost impossible.

"You can sense it when you're around these athletes. The ones doing the future learning program have a more relaxed persona." — Melvyn Wilkes, Sunshine Coast FC

Why mainstream school stopped working for high-performance athletes

This is the part of the conversation Melvyn was most direct about, and worth quoting carefully. Sunshine Coast FC was not built to knock mainstream education. They still have athletes enrolled in mainstream programs in the UK, and many do well. The point is more honest than that.

The athletes on Euka's flexible learning model are observably less stressed than the athletes still navigating mainstream timetables, exam conditions, and rigid attendance rules. Melvyn lives with these kids for stretches at a time when they are in the UK. He sees the difference.

For a child who is already carrying the mental load of competing at an elite level, a single inflexible class on a Wednesday morning can become the thing they think about for 24 hours either side. Multiply that across a week, and the cumulative cost on performance and wellbeing is real.

"You would be shocked at how well a Euka Future Learning student performs, compared to those learning distance-ed or in person, because it's a more relaxed environment." — Melvyn Wilkes, Sunshine Coast FC

This is consistent with what Euka has seen across its own family base. Approximately 5 percent of Euka students are aspiring athletes, including Olympic athletes, world champions, and the next wave of professional-track competitors. The pattern is the same: flexibility in when and how the learning happens removes a layer of stress that no amount of resilience training can replace.

How Euka fits a full-time training schedule

Three things in particular make Euka's program work for the Sunshine Coast FC model

It travels. An athlete in Brisbane, Adelaide or rural Queensland gets the same curriculum as an athlete on a UK road trip in November. The state of residence stops being a constraint. So does the country.

It is self-paced. When training takes precedence on a Tuesday afternoon, the lessons do not vanish. They sit there waiting for the athlete, ready to be picked up on Sunday evening or in the back of the team bus. There is no penalty for movement.

It is rigorous. This is the point Melvyn and Brett both stressed. Flexibility does not mean lower standards. Athletes are still ticking the same curriculum boxes, the same Australian Curriculum standards, the same Grade 12 outcomes. The path through is just shaped around their lives instead of forcing their lives into a single shape.

For families considering a similar move, Euka's flexible learning page is the right place to start understanding what that looks like in practice.

Key Insights for Families

If your child is on an elite sporting pathway, learning needs to travel. Mainstream school is built around a fixed time and a fixed place. Aspiring athletes train in the day, compete on weekends, and increasingly travel between states or countries. The education system you choose has to accommodate that, not the other way around.

Mental load is part of training load. Coaches now talk about cognitive recovery the same way they talk about physical recovery. If a class, an exam, or a teacher conflict is hijacking the night before training, performance suffers. Removing avoidable stressors is part of athlete care, not a soft preference.

Curriculum alignment beats curriculum location. The reason Sunshine Coast FC chose Euka was not because the academic content was different. It was because the Australian Curriculum is delivered the same way to every athlete regardless of which state they walked in from. For families moving between states for sport, performing arts or work, that alone is the unlock.

Not every child is going to be a professional. The model still works for them. This is the honest reframe Brett brought into the conversation. Even if the elite-sport pathway does not pan out, an athlete graduates with a complete Australian Curriculum education, real-world time-management skills built from running their own schedule, and the confidence that comes from years of high-performance training. Those are durable assets either way.

"Euka was built for students who want to aspire to bigger, better things — kids who can't sit at a desk all day." — Brett Campbell, Euka Future Learning

Your Family, Your Journey

If your child trains, performs or competes at a level that demands daytime hours, this episode is the clearest look yet at what an alternative could feel like. You do not have to be aiming at the Premier League to benefit from a model that travels with you. Many Euka families come to us simply because their week does not fit inside 9 to 3.

If you are curious about how this might work for your family, the Future Learners podcast has plenty of other episodes from families who have made the switch, including Travel Schooling with The Slow Road and Travel Schooling: Everything You Need to Know. And if you would like to know more about Sunshine Coast FC's full-time academy or international pathway, head to sunshinecoastfc.com.au.

figure.wp-block-table.testimonial-element { background-color:#fffdf5; } figure.wp-block-table.testimonial-element .has-fixed-layout td{ padding:2em 2em; border:none; border-left:.2em #e8a838 solid; } figure.wp-block-table.testimonial-element .has-fixed-layout td em{ display: block; margin-bottom: -1.1em; } figure.wp-block-table.testimonial-element .has-fixed-layout td strong{ font-size:.8em; } h3{ font-size:16px !important; font-weight:900; } { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "PodcastEpisode", "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#episode", "name": "How Young Athletes Train Full-Time Without Falling Behind in School", "episodeNumber": 42, "description": "Brett Campbell and Melvyn Wilkes, Sporting Director of Sunshine Coast FC (Australia's only full-time youth football academy), discuss how young athletes train 16–20 hours a week, travel to the UK for elite youth competitions, and still complete a full Australian Curriculum education using Euka's flexible learning model.", "datePublished": "2026-05-16", "dateModified": "2026-05-15", "duration": "PT33M17S", "url": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://euka.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/euka-future-learners-podcast-episode-42-how-young-athletes-train-without-falling-behind-in-school-thumbnail-1024x536.png", "width": 1024, "height": 536 }, "partOfSeries": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/future-learners-podcast/#podcast-series" }, "associatedMedia": [ { "@type": "AudioObject", "url": "https://open.spotify.com/show/7g35PbIHMXHV6hRVMIHhkC", "encodingFormat": "audio/mpeg", "name": "Future Learners Podcast — Episode 42 on Spotify" }, { "@type": "AudioObject", "url": "https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/future-learners/id1717947259", "encodingFormat": "audio/mpeg", "name": "Future Learners Podcast — Episode 42 on Apple Podcasts" } ], "video": { "@type": "VideoObject", "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#video", "name": "How Young Athletes Train Full-Time Without Falling Behind in School | Future Learners Podcast Ep 42", "description": "Brett Campbell and Melvyn Wilkes discuss elite youth athlete education, the Euka and Sunshine Coast FC partnership, and the international pathway to UK youth football.", "thumbnailUrl": "https://euka.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/euka-future-learners-podcast-episode-42-how-young-athletes-train-without-falling-behind-in-school-thumbnail-1024x536.png", "uploadDate": "2026-05-16T00:00:00+10:00", "duration": "PT33M17S", "embedUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/embed/GeRob6s5ATk", "url": "https://youtu.be/GeRob6s5ATk", "publisher": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#organization" } }, "author": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#brett-campbell" }, "actor": [ { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#brett-campbell" }, { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#melvyn-wilkes" } ], "publisher": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#organization" }, "inLanguage": "en-AU", "keywords": [ "homeschooling for athletes", "flexible learning Australia", "youth football academy", "Sunshine Coast FC", "elite athlete education", "Australian Curriculum", "homeschool sport", "Future Learners Podcast" ], "transcript": "Brett: Hello and welcome to another episode of Future Learners. I am Brett Campbell, co-founder and CEO of Euka Future Learning, and today we have a special episode. I am joined by Melvyn, who is the Sporting Director and Global Operations Manager of Sunshine Coast FC, a partner of ours and a partnership we are really excited about. We brought Melvyn in today to tell us and tell you about the academy and what they are doing. Brett: At Euka, we believe we are a very pioneering organisation, and we only partner with people who are working in a very similar field. What Sunshine Coast FC are doing, I wish was available in Melbourne when I was a kid. So we want to talk about this opportunity, and also check in on how a lot of our students have been going and how it really works when you are an aspiring athlete trying to get your schooling completed as well. Melvyn, welcome to the episode. Melvyn: Thanks for having me, Brett. It is really interesting. Brett: Let us start by giving our listeners an overview. What is Sunshine Coast FC? Melvyn: The FC obviously stands for Football Club, but we have many facets to our operation. We are more of a sporting club, Brett. Football is our core business, but we also have a basketball program, a netball program, and a dance academy. All of them are full-time. By full-time I mean the students combine their academic studies with full-time training, and full-time training is between 16 and 20 hours per week during the working day. Brett: And for those who are unsure of what football is, the running joke, it is soccer. I will do the interpretation. One of the things that was really exciting when you reached out to Euka is that we accommodate a very wide variety of needs. One of our largest growing cohorts is the aspiring athlete arena. Close to about 5 percent of our students are in that space. We have Olympic athletes, world champions, aspiring athletes from dance through to football. We are living in a very different world now than when I was at school. Brett: When you talk about 16 to 20 hours of training, how have you currently set up the process? How does it operate? You have been operating prior to reaching out to Euka and adopting a very different education philosophy. Talk to me about how that looks from the schooling element. Melvyn: We transitioned our program from part-time to full-time bang in the middle of the pandemic in July 2020. People thought we were crazy, but it is a similar sort of story to yourselves with Euka. You have to be innovative and you have to be bold. We currently have a partner college, Peregian Beach College, based on the Sunshine Coast. They deliver mainstream education from prep to Year 12 which is stock standard for any educational institution. Melvyn: What we wanted to do was mirror what the academies were doing in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world. We worked closely with the academic team and the principal to devise a timetable which could encompass training within the day without cutting any corners on the education. We went from piloting the program with 26 student athletes when we kicked off in July 2020, to 70-odd within eight or nine months, to over 100 within 12 months, and as we speak today we are about 180 full-time student athletes based at Peregian Beach College. That is funded academic tuition by our sporting operation. Melvyn: Let me talk through what a working week looks like in our full-time academies. Generally, we do not have access to the athletes on a Monday morning because they have had competition on the weekend and they are still in their recovery process. Our first point of contact is Monday afternoon at 2:45 PM. They report for school on Monday morning, do lessons through the day, and there is a gym session during the day with our strength and conditioning team. We have full-time S&C coaches and full-time sports scientists. Melvyn: Tuesday is our main contact day. Athletes report at 7:15 AM for sport-science testing and data collection. We have many platforms including Polar and Apollo Sciences. We do heart-rate variability testing, thermal muscle scanning, and various data collection to get everybody's baseline recovery status for the week. After testing they go into academic lessons up until lunchtime, then we have them on the field from 12:30 PM through to roughly 4:30 PM. Melvyn: Wednesday morning we have them back in at 7:15 AM until 8:30 AM for another technical session on the field. They have quite a big break where they go into academic lessons up until about 2:30 or 3:00 PM, and then we have them back out until 5:00 PM. Thursday morning we do not touch them. They report for school as normal, have academic lessons until about 12:30 or 1:00 PM, and then we have them back out until 4:30 PM. There are gym sessions, performance analysis, and practical elements throughout. Melvyn: Friday is more relaxed. We will do one component around midday because a lot of the players are preparing for competition on Saturday or Sunday. We taper the training on Friday to help maintain them or prepare them for the weekend. And then they have games on the weekend. Brett: My back-of-the-napkin maths says they are doing 50 percent school, 50 percent training. Melvyn: Yeah, but it is still not enough training for us, Brett. We are greedy people. Sport people are greedy people. That is how we came across you. Melvyn: We had some challenges in our state within the football fraternity. We could see them coming, but we wanted to grow our operation and provide additional pathways which would make the competition more robust and produce more talented players for the Australian nation. When we started looking at this in 2018, that did not sit well with various organisations that govern football in Queensland. That did not deter us. In 2023 we decided to expedite the process of our pathway from Australia to other parts of the world. Melvyn: I am originally from the UK, albeit an Australian citizen now. I still maintain my contacts in the UK football fraternity. That enabled us to legally affiliate our football club in the United Kingdom under the name Sunshine Coast FC UK, and to participate in extremely robust youth competitions, some of the best in the UK at their specific age groups of Under-16, Under-18 and Under-23. We are about to develop and move into the senior men's space. Melvyn: What we required was another unique opportunity from an educational perspective. Rather than just pulling from our academy, we opened the network up across Australia. Last year we had around 167 applications vying for 32 spots to play in the United Kingdom. Players came from Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Cairns, regional Queensland. We had contact from New Zealand. Melvyn: Each state has a national education curriculum, as you know, but there are slight variations in different states. That provides complexities to try and get everybody on the same page. When you have students enrolled in Year 11 going into Year 12 who have already done their elective subjects, Year 11 has to marry up with Year 12, and different states are delivering Year 11 to Year 12 differently. Melvyn: Our partner school, Peregian Beach College, were having some of these challenges trying to align Year 11 and Year 12 across states. That is when we did our research, our due diligence, whatever you would like to call it. We found you guys at Euka and made contact. I think it was Jake at the offset, and then it was full steam ahead. The service we have had from Euka has been top class. The support, the guidance, even working with our academic institution at Peregian Beach College. There has been communication back and forth, and even with the parents. It has been seamless. Melvyn: It is important to bring the truth to the table. A lot of people who do podcasts mask things over and paint rosy pictures. We had real challenges, and the challenges came from mainstream education. There is a large element of rigid learning attached to mainstream education. I am certainly not knocking it, because it has a place, and it is horses for courses for parents and guardians. We support all of our athletes whether they are on mainstream education or on the future learning platform. Melvyn: Our preference is to have all of our athletes with Euka on the homeschool program. We are replicating what the very sharp end of football is doing in the United Kingdom, the Premier League. The vast majority of Premier League clubs run their youth program as full-time and school them inside the football club. This is the closest any kid will ever get from Australia to Premier League football, by embarking on this with us in football, and also jumping on with Euka Future Learning. Melvyn: We still have a number of athletes on mainstream education in the UK, and as much as they are doing well in football, they have a lot of challenges in terms of the education. They have to be in contact with the teacher, they have exams, certain parameters, exam conditions. We have provisions in place to deliver the program as prescribed. But the online platform with Euka is less rigid, which means there is less stress on the students. Melvyn: You can tell the ones on mainstream education and the ones on future learning. You can sense it when you are around these athletes. We live with these athletes. I have spent significant time with them over the last six months. You can feel and sense that some of the athletes are under pressure with the mainstream education program, and the ones doing the future learning program have more of a relaxed persona. Melvyn: I am the one doing all the recruitment for student athletes going to the UK. I am the first point of contact, and I am also the person who, for want of a better word, is selling the program. I have to talk about the Euka program and the mainstream education program, and offer the holistic package. I always lean towards steering parents to look at the future learning platform, because of the stress and strain mainstream education can lay on a young person at a critical stage in their life when they are vying to get into a professional football club. Brett: I always look at things through the outcome we are trying to solve for. In your case, you are wanting to give your students the best possible shot at becoming a professional athlete. What that means is that education is not the first cab off the rank in terms of when it happens. It still has to happen, but it has to fit around the sport. We now live in a world where unless you are going down specific routes like medicine or law, the rigidity of school as the first priority does not always serve the child. Aspiring athletes are a clear example. Brett: Even if they have one class on a Wednesday at 10 AM in a subject they are not great at, or they do not enjoy, or they are behind on, or they do not like the teacher, that one thing can be the thing that hijacks them the night before and stays with them the day after. We are trying to create high-performing athletes here. Euka was built for that. We say we are the backbone for students who want to aspire to bigger, better things and who cannot sit at a desk all day to do their schoolwork. Brett: I want to reframe that, because we absolutely still believe in education. Not all of these athletes are going to become professionals. That is the reality. But the beauty of what you have built is that you have set it up around the outcome of a student aspiring to be a professional, and at the same time making sure they are ticking the boxes and getting an education. Because that is still required. Melvyn: I tackle it as a parent. My own kids have been through mainstream school education in the UK and Australia. The world is evolving. I always say to parents, the words future learning mean exactly what they say. This is the way the world is going. When I am talking to parents now, the conversation is always related to the health and wellbeing of the young person, particularly mental health. A lot of stress and anxiety is centred around exams, assessments, going to school, dealing with people face to face. Melvyn: I used to be a post-16 lecturer in the UK, so I can speak from experience as an educator. What appeases or alleviates parents concerns is when I explain the online platform. It is done at their own pace. If you put two athletes in a room, one doing future learning and one doing mainstream, they will both come out with the same certificate of education. But one is sitting in a classroom being directed, while the other is at their own pace with support. You would be shocked at how the future learning student performs because it is a more relaxed environment. Melvyn: With future learning, they are managing their own time. Indirectly, this is setting young people up for time management in how they conduct themselves through the online platform. You do not need a bell telling you when to start and when to stop. You do not need to move from one classroom to the next. You really do manage your own time. Brett: This is the way the future is moving. There are options now, which is what I love. There are options for families to choose whatever path they want. If you want your child to be an aspiring athlete, or an aspiring actor, or anything, you have to ask how do we put them in the best position possible. Not everyone learns the same way, at the same time, or at the same pace. Until recently there has not been a real option for parents. Now there is.", "citation": [ { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "You would be shocked at how well a Euka Future Learning student performs, compared to those learning distance-ed or in person, because it is a more relaxed environment.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#melvyn-wilkes" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "You can sense it when you are around these athletes. The ones doing the future learning program have a more relaxed persona.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#melvyn-wilkes" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "We worked closely with the academic team and the principal to devise a timetable which could encompass training within the day without cutting any corners on the education.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#melvyn-wilkes" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Euka was built for students who want to aspire to bigger, better things — kids who can't sit at a desk all day.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#brett-campbell" } } ] }, { "@type": "PodcastSeries", "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/future-learners-podcast/#podcast-series", "name": "Future Learners Podcast", "url": "https://euka.edu.au/future-learners-podcast/", "description": "The Future Learners Podcast explores the evolving world of education — homeschooling, flexible learning, elite athlete pathways, and raising children who are ready for the future. Hosted by Brett Campbell, CEO and co-founder of Euka Future Learning.", "image": "https://euka.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/euka-future-learners-podcast-apple.svg", "author": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#brett-campbell" }, "publisher": { "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#organization" }, "webFeed": "https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/future-learners/id1717947259", "inLanguage": "en-AU" }, { "@type": "Person", "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#brett-campbell", "name": "Brett Campbell", "jobTitle": "CEO and Co-Founder, Euka Future Learning", "url": "https://euka.edu.au/", "image": "https://euka.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/euka-future-learners-host-brett.png", "sameAs": [ "https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettocampbell/", "https://www.facebook.com/brettcampbellfan", "https://www.instagram.com/itsbrettcampbell/" ] }, { "@type": "Person", "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#melvyn-wilkes", "name": "Melvyn Wilkes", "jobTitle": "Sporting Director and Global Operations Manager, Sunshine Coast FC", "url": "https://sunshinecoastfc.com.au/" }, { "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/#organization", "name": "Euka Future Learning", "url": "https://euka.edu.au/", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://euka.edu.au/wp-content/themes/euka/assets/images/euka-future-learning-logo.svg" }, "sameAs": [ "https://www.facebook.com/EukaFutureLearning/", "https://www.instagram.com/eukafuturelearning/", "https://www.linkedin.com/company/euka/", "https://www.tiktok.com/@eukafuturelearning", "https://www.youtube.com/@eukafuturelearning" ] }, { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://euka.edu.au/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Future Learners Podcast", "item": "https://euka.edu.au/future-learners-podcast/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "How Young Athletes Train Full-Time Without Falling Behind in School", "item": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/" } ] }, { "@type": "FAQPage", "@id": "https://euka.edu.au/all-episodes/how-young-athletes-train-full-time-without-falling-behind-in-school-42/#faq", "mainEntity": [ { "@type": "Question", "name": "Does my child need a flexible education if they are on an elite sporting pathway?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Yes. Mainstream school is built around a fixed time and a fixed place. Aspiring athletes train during the day, compete on weekends, and increasingly travel between states or countries. The education system you choose has to accommodate that — not the other way around. Euka's flexible learning model travels with the athlete, delivering the Australian Curriculum regardless of where they are training or competing that month." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "How does mainstream school affect a young athlete's performance and wellbeing?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Mental load is part of training load. Coaches now talk about cognitive recovery the same way they talk about physical recovery. If a class, an exam, or a teacher conflict is hijacking the night before training, performance suffers. Removing avoidable stressors is part of athlete care, not a soft preference. Athletes on Euka's flexible learning model are observably less stressed than those navigating rigid mainstream timetables and exam conditions." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "Why does curriculum consistency matter more than curriculum location for travelling athletes?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Sunshine Coast FC chose Euka not because the academic content was different, but because the Australian Curriculum is delivered the same way to every athlete regardless of which state they came from. Each Australian state runs a slightly different version of the curriculum, and Year 11 to Year 12 progression rules differ state to state. When recruiting 32 athletes from five states to compete in the UK as a single squad, that fragmentation makes coordination almost impossible. Euka's model solved it." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "Does flexible homeschool learning still work if my child does not become a professional athlete?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Yes. Even if the elite-sport pathway does not pan out, an athlete on Euka's program graduates with a complete Australian Curriculum education, real-world time-management skills built from running their own schedule, and the confidence that comes from years of high-performance training. Those are durable assets either way. The model is built around the outcome of a student aspiring to be a professional, while still ensuring they tick every curriculum box." } } ] } ] }