Kelly Penfold on the Evolution of Women’s Sport and the Push for Year-Round High-Performance Pathways

St George Illawarra Dragons speed and conditioning coach, Kelly Penfold, has called for structural enhancements in domestic women’s sporting pathways, urging national codes to institute full-time athlete support frameworks to maximize commercial and physical outcomes.

Speaking ahead of her appearance at the Women in Sport Summit 2026, Penfold highlighted that while early-stage athlete development and physical preparation have improved, the transition toward year-round high-performance environments remains uneven across domestic competitions.

Institutionalising Long-Term Athlete Development

Reflecting on the commercial and physical evolution of female sports, Penfold noted that structural investments in physical performance programs have significantly raised the execution level of domestic competitions.

“Think the real positive change is definitely in the support around the programs and definitely the conversation, I guess, in around the more that we can develop our athletes at an earlier age, the more opportunities they have across various different sports.”

“So if you look at… 10 to 12 years ago, that they had a like a body type or or a physique that probably suited AFL or rugby or some of these sort of women’s sports that have that have come out of traditionally men’s sports, and maybe didn’t get the opportunity or didn’t have the option to play those.

“And now there’s all these teams and rep teams and support and gym programs that that are that are attached to these sports,” Penfold said.

Transitioning to Full-Time High-Performance Models

Despite structural progress in codes like netball, Penfold identified an operational gap in competitions such as AFLW and NRLW, where athletes frequently navigate seasonal, part-time setups.

“I’d love to see the real push around how do we make a lot of these sports more full time.”

“Netball does a really great job of they’re full-time athletes.

“Whereas some of our other AFLW and NRLW as an example, they are still, you know, traveling home at the end of the season and going and doing something else for sort of six months and almost checking out of that athlete realm momentarily.

“I do think just dialing up to being able to go, how do we create more full-time support systems, which might not be full-time athletes, but the system at least in place to support them across that time,” Penfold added.

Democratising Performance Data and Industry Networking

Addressing technical execution across varying resource levels, Penfold outlined plans to demonstrate how sports organisations can leverage accessible force plate and dynamometer data to optimize player health and performance decision-making.

“I am hoping to really get done is convey a message around it doesn’t matter if you’re in a full time environment.

“Or a part-time system, how can you pull access to technology that a lot of us now have to just collect some data that then helps that athlete or player on their journey through to sort of kickstart them or support them to be able to keep playing,” Penfold explained.

Advocating for career progression within sports performance, Penfold advised emerging female practitioners to establish authentic industry connections to bridge technical and operational development gaps.

“Piece of advice from me would be if you really want to go at it, then find the people who are already there and connect with them as much as possible because ultimately other people do open up opportunities for you,” Penfold said.

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