One family’s gift inspires a new era in professional coaching
Great coaches do more than teach skills.
For Grimwade House parents Alex Singh and Kudrat Makkar, great coaching is about helping young people build confidence, discover their strengths, and learn to weigh thinking for themselves against working well with others.
That belief inspired the family to support exceptional staff at Melbourne Grammar School. Their gift, received this year, has allowed for Director of Football (Soccer), Goran Stajic, to extend his work into Grimwade House and test a new pilot program for girls: Strive & Thrive.
The family had long considered how they might give back to the School community. For Kudrat, it was sport and coaching’s ability to extend far beyond the field, and fulfil the promise of a holistic education, that led to their decision.
“Soccer teaches teamwork. There’s a lot of resilience, confidence and leadership that comes from it,” she says.
“We’ve seen that with our son Aidan,” adds Alex. “We see his engagement in the sport, not just playing the game, but outside of that, and the friendships he’s making with his club and other friends at school. It’s given him opportunities to grow in other ways.”
These are the qualities that sit at the core of Strive & Thrive.
Around 50 students from Years 5 and 6 are taking part in the 10-week program, learning from the same specialist coaches who help shape Melbourne
Grammar’s senior soccer program. In true Grimwade fashion, the focus is not only on developing skills, but on participation, confidence and discovering what can be learned by having a go.
For Goran, success is not defined by wins and losses, but by confidence, self-belief and a willingness to step forward and try something new.
“They can develop in their own time, in their own space, amongst their friends and their peers,” he says. “That whole self-confidence and self-esteem piece is really important.”
Royce Helm, Head of Grimwade House, says the program complements the School’s broader commitment to helping students develop confidence through experience.
“We know that courage is built through competence,” he says. “This program is helping girls build those fundamental competencies in an environment that is supportive, challenging and fun.”
The impact has also extended beyond the students themselves, offering a great boon to staff satisfaction. After decades spent coaching at the highest levels of the game, Goran says working with students discovering soccer for the first time has provided a welcome counterpoint to the intensity of elite competition.
“We all spent the whole first session just smiling ear to ear,” he says. “It’s been a reminder of why we fell in love with the game in the first place.”
While the program is only in its first season, Alex and Kudrat are already thinking about its long-term impact.
“Investing in something like this creates an environment where young girls feel encouraged to get involved, stay active, and believe in their abilities both on and off the field,” says Kudrat.
“Once these girls leave Grimwade, they’ll always have in their minds that their love for the sport started here, and their connections as Old Melburnians will be all the more powerful.”
Some of the most important lessons of childhood are learned not through results, but through having a go.
