Behind every VIS athlete is a community. Family Day brought them into the building.
On the last day of the school holidays, the screens at Lakeside Stadium, ordinarily tuned to elite sport, switched to Disney. For one afternoon, the Victorian Institute of Sport (VIS) opened its high performance facility at Albert Park to the families and support networks of its athletes and staff, trading training schedules for boomerang painting, a barbecue, and a children’s movie afternoon.
For one afternoon, those rhythms made room for something equally important.
Children explored the corridors where Olympic and Paralympic athletes prepare for the world’s biggest stages. Staff became tour guides and hosts. Each reflected the same conviction that underpins the VIS’s approach to athlete and staff development: that the people who perform at the highest level do so because of the communities around them, not in spite of them.
For staff currently on parental leave, the day carried particular weight. Jacqui Gurr, a physiotherapist at the VIS, attended while on her second period of parental leave. Her experience captured something the event was specifically designed to create.
It felt like walking back into a community that had their arms wide open to my change of life circumstances.
“The day reminds me that the VIS understands you have a family and that I am always welcome back.”
The VIS’s commitment to moments like this is formally embedded in the organisation’s Gender Equality Action Plan, which prioritises conditions where careers and caring responsibilities can coexist, and where transitions back to the workplace feel genuinely supported. Family Day is one of the ways that commitment moves from policy into practice.
Jamie McPherson, Connection to Country Officer at the VIS, led children in painting boomerangs, bringing First Nations knowledge and culture into the heart of the facility in a hands-on, creative way.
Jamie McPherson helps with the painting of boomerangs.
That this happened at Lakeside, one of Victoria’s foremost high performance environments, reflected something deliberate about the kind of place the VIS is building.
Dave Madigan, High Performance General Manager, reflected on what the day represents within the organisation’s values.
“One of our key values at VIS is to back each other and build trust,” Madigan said.
“Events such as Family Day facilitate informal interaction between employees, their families, and management.
We get to know more about the whole person, not just the employee.
“I feel it helps foster stronger interpersonal relationships, trust and care, and it’s just nice to be able to spend a day at work with my daughter.”
The VIS’s pathway to the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games and Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games runs through the athletes at Lakeside. It also runs through the staff who support them, the families who back them, and the culture that makes this facility a place people want to return to.
Family Day is what that investment looks like.
