The AFL Hawks ‘flew’ into Yarrawonga last Tuesday to visit local schools in the area such as Sacred Heart Primary and College as part of their AFL Visit Program.
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Among the Hawks players was former pupil Dan Howe, who received the highest amount of questions from excited and intrigued primary school students.
Each of the players spoke about their journeys from Auskick to the AFL and gave the fantastic advice to students to throw their hat into the ring and go the extra mile and give 100% effort to achieve their dreams.
“I enjoy doing the school visits as its good to get around the kids,” Dan said.
“This one is more special to me being back in my hometown and visiting my old school, it’s just more personal.
“There are still a lot of my old teachers here which is great to see and to be able to visit them and have a quick chat is awesome.”
One of Sacred Heart’s staff that Dan knows well is mum Liz who was proud to see the students getting around her boy.
“I visit home as often as I can but I don’t often get to come back to my old school, so this visit was great,” Dan said.
“It’s also good to do these visits with some of my teammates that are metro boys and grew up around the city, they get to experience the country and see where I grew up.”
Oliver Hanrahan, Marc Pittonet, Jackson Ross, Dylan Moore, James Worpol, Jacob Koschitzke and Dan all yielded a number of questions from students of every football team supporter base such as who will captain the Hawks this year, how many members Hawthorn has, what were players back-up careers and what was going through their minds during the draft, before students had the opportunity to shake hands and receive autographs from the players.
“It’s always great when we have people such as sports stars that so many of the students know, come in and have a chat and answer any questions the students have,” Dean said.
“It makes them happy, they realise these people they look up to are still approachable and having a past student like Dan visit the school really puts a thought in their heads that if something such as footy is what they want to pursue further down the track, if they put their mind to it and work hard they can achieve it.”
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