ATHLETICS is Lianna Davidson’s so called fun sport and when she brings a gold medal home to her Bowen Mountain home it is easy to see why.
The 13-year-old threw a personal best throw of 43.73 in the 13 girls javelin at a national athletics championships in Adelaide over the weekend of April 23 and 24.
Lianna is fairly handy with a javelin, and she found out about it thanks to the sport she takes most seriously: baseball.
“I play baseball and I’m a pitcher. When I threw a javelin for the first time people said ‘oh you have a good arm’,” she said.
Lianna plays for the NSW girls baseball team, and also plays for the Quakers Hill baseball team with the boys because there aren’t enough girls to form teams at club level.
“It is becoming a bit harder in baseball because the boys are getting a bit bigger and stronger. But I like playing against the boys because they give me a lot of competition,” she said.
The arm she mentioned, which hurls baseballs and javelins, has earned her a place at Hills Sport High School through baseball.
She travels a long way for training, and because of this, she was enrolled in the school, to help her catch up on her school work which she will inevitably miss thanks to competing in athletics and baseball.
“My javelin coach right now is doing a couple of private sessions with me. We go up to Glenbrook and Wollongong to get some training,” she said.
“I do a lot of weight stuff and use balls and you do a lot of work on the run up and technique.”
