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Sofia Higgott is more motivated than ever to achieve her goals after attending the Aon girl's high performance clinic at the Takapuna Boating Club last weekend.
The 18-year-old was one of about 20 young females from around the country who attended the clinic run by Yachting New Zealand, which featured a series of workshops as well as the opportunity to try windfoiling and wingfoiling as an introduction to another aspect of the sport.
The highlight for Higgott was hearing from three-time Olympic medallist Barbara Kendall, who spoke about a range of topics from the pyschology of winning to the importance of first impressions.
"I didn’t really know what to expect going into the weekend but it was done so well, especially the session with Barbara Kendall," Higgott said. "She was so awesome to listen to, her energy, passion and love, not only for sailing, but also the mental aspect of it and how her campaigns were run.
"Her talk made me realise how lucky we are to be in such an incredible sport and how amazing the opportunities are that we get here, especially at clinics like these. There are so many countries you wouldn’t get the opportunity to come together like that and learn all about female sailing. It was eye opening and really motivating."
Higgott was last year named in the NZL Sailing Foundation Youth Team that would have competed at the youth sailing world championships had it not been for disuptions caused by Covid-19 and her long-term ambition is to compete at the Olympics in either the Nacra 17 or 49erFX.
The group spent part of Sunday trying out windfoiling and wingfoiling at Lake Pupuke. Main photo: Sofia Higgott and Hamish McLaren were the top Nacra 15 combination in 2020. Photo: Yachting New Zealand.
Plenty of others at the weekend's clinic hold similar ambitions and one of the aims of the clinic was to build the connections between this country's top young female sailors. They also participated in a female health and safe sport workshop and heard from New Zealand SailGP team member Liv Mackay.
Yachting New Zealand women's sailing manager Rosie Chapman led the clinic and aims to build on the weekend with other similar opportunities. One in the planning stage is a Waszp have-a-go day run in conjunction with Emirates team New Zealand designer and Waszp sailor Elise Beavis to help introduce foiling to more females.
"It's the first time we've run something like that and it was really valuable to introduce the sailors to additional opportunities in our sport," Chapman said.
"The feedback we've received has been really positive. People were stoked they had the opportunity to meet people from other classes in that sort of environment and they were buzzing after Barbara Kendall's workshop because she was super-motivating."
