Professional sporting organisations strive to engage youth participants in their chosen sport to build their community and supporter base, at the same time promote the overall health and wellbeing benefits sports at all levels provides. This has never been more prevalent with 50% of all life-time mental health disorders emerging by age 14 and 75% by age 24. Increasingly Sport plays a vital role in helping tackle this alarming issue.

Working with Oxil, the Western Sydney Wanderers (WSW) and Gladesville Hornsby Football Association (GHFA) partnered to deliver a wellness-based program to their junior participants using the Challenger app and tech platform, to connect professional and grassroots community sport to improve the overall well-being of young people.

The Challenger App gave young people a relevant channel to record and monitor activities that influence how they feel physically and mentally. The back-end platform gave WSW and club administrators the ability to deliver engaging content whilst monitoring health metrics, ensuring that the health and wellbeing of their players was the highest priority. Overall the program resulted in 300+ footballers from 8 talent pathway teams, aged 9 to 18 in the GHFA downloading the app, generating 44,000+ data responses over a 120-day period.