Dr Mary Ann Dove is a leading authority on the role of coaches and parents in encouraging athletes to achieve their own potential in sport. Her focus is on creating person-centric sporting environments through developing emotional intelligence, leadership and communication skills in coaches and educating parents in the challenges of the sporting landscape. She is a regular educator, speaker, writer and consultant at schools, clubs, sporting federations and conferences. Although she has worked from developmental to the elite levels across a wide variety of sports, her particular expertise is in cricket and field hockey. Other experience includes talent development, transformation challenges, team effectiveness, mental performance coaching, player development and welfare, and team management. Mary Ann has a PhD from the University of Cape Town where her research resulted in a socio-ecological framework of cricket talent development in diverse societies. In addition, she has executive coaching and psychology qualifications as well as facilitation, lecturing and coaching experience. She is still a very active, but less competitive sportswoman including running, tennis and in 2009 successfully summited Mt Kilimanjaro. And in her spare time she is a mother to her grown-up son and daughter.

Sport and exercise has been a passion of mine since I was a primary school kid. I am in the fortunate position to have my passion my profession. As a registered biokineticist, I have travelled the world training and rehabilitating both professional and school going athletes. This incuded being the strength and conditioning specialist for both the national soccer team (Bafana Bafana) and the national cricket team (Proteas). I am currently running my own private pratice (Grayhound training) with a focus on education of players, coaches and administrators in both a formal and informal envrionment.

Dr Janine Gray is passionate about sport having a positive impact on all who participate in it, from young to old, and from elite to recreational athletes. Janine’s research interests include biomechanics and motor control, with view to both enhancing athletic performance and simultaneously preventing sports injuries. Much of her research has investigated cricketers and water polo players. She currently holds an adjunct lecturing position at UCT in the Division of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine (ESSM), Department of Human Biology, Faculty of Health Sciences. Janine obtained her physiotherapy degree from Wits and obtained an honours degree in Exercise Science from the University of Cape Town before completing her PhD degree in 2012. Her thesis investigated the contribution of various aspects of biomechanical, physiological and muscle recruitment factors in the aetiology of low back pain in adolescent fast bowlers. She is a consultant for the Sri Ramachandra University, India and has co-ordinated the Cricket Centre of Excellence at the Institute. She previously held the position of Research Consultant for Cricket South Africa. Clinically, her interest is the shoulder and lumbar spine of adolescents with a special focus on the contribution of workload to many of the overuse injuries reported by sportsmen and women.