Sport
13 April, 2022
Sharp vying for international qualification
AFTER a personal best performance at the Athletics Australia Chemist Warehouse National Championships, Terang’s Lynley Sharp is hoping to take her game to the world stage.
AFTER a personal best performance at the Athletics Australia Chemist Warehouse National Championships, Terang’s Lynley Sharp is hoping to take her game to the world stage.
13 year-old Lynley qualified for the national championships in hammer throw, at that stage ranked 16th in Australia.
After beating her personal best by 6m at the nationals, Lynley climbed to eighth in her age group in the national rankings.
Lynley has competed in six qualifiers for the Virtus Oceania Asia Games and is hoping her efforts will be enough to earn her a spot representing Australia when the games are held in Brisbane in November.
Having started at Camperdown Little Athletics Club in under sixes, Lynley has also been competing for the Eureka Athletic Club in Ballarat for the past five years.
She spent much of her athletics journey focusing on triple jump, but has recently picked up hammer throw, and has taken to it like a fish to water.
The young athlete’s support crew now includes Ballarat-based coach Shane Benbow and national jumps, sprints and throws coach Paul Cleary.
Lynley is also a keen swimmer, and as well as qualifying for the state swimming championships in freestyle and backstroke has participated in two Oceania Games qualifiers in the pool as well,where she competes in the S19 classification for athletes with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
No such classification exists for athletics at this stage, but Lynley’s mother Cindy McDougall said her daughter has both the confidence and ability to compete successfully in open classification.
“Her determination is one thing, but I think you have to have a high level of respect for yourself, and for others,” McDougall said.
“She’s got a great self-belief, when she sets her mind to something she believes in herself, that she can achieve her goal.
“A big thing about Lynley is, she doesn’t let her disability become a defining factor.”
McDougall said Lynley’s understanding of her disability has been a major factor in her being able to manage and overcome obstacles.
“She has autism, and she knows it makes some things a lot harder for her, makes things hard that are easy for others, but that’s never an excuse,” she said.
“That’s something I’m really proud of. It would be very easy for her to say, ‘No, this is too hard for me because of my disability,’ but she never does.”