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Jets Youngsters Juggle Books and Boots

Newcastle Jets Carlie Ikonomou, Loren Mahoney, Libby Sharpe, Kirstyn Pearce and Emma Stewart will all be mixing football with study in the near future.

Like thousands of other students across Australia, the next 3 weeks will be stressful period of exams and study as the HSC gets underway.

As if that wasn’t enough to occupy their time, Newcastle Jets Carlie Ikonomou, Loren Mahoney, Libby Sharpe, Kirstyn Pearce and Emma Stewart also have an intensive training schedule to fulfill on the field, plus match commitments with the Newcastle Jets.

The task is made even harder when it is considered that Ikonomou, Mahoney and Stewart have to travel from Sydney four times a week for training.

Despite running a tight camp during the hectic training schedule five days a week as well as matches, Head Coach Wayne O-Sullivan is supportive of the girls currently completing their HSC.

“Over the next three weeks we will be balancing training schedules with the HSC and we-re trying to do the right thing by the parents, because obviously as important as football is, the education of these young girls is vitally important at this stage of their life, so we don-t want to get in the way of that either.”

The girls appreciate the emphasis that O-Sullivan and Assistant Coach, Andre Gumprecht, place on the importance of their studies according to Pearce.

“Sully and Andre have been pretty good, we-ve told them all of our exam timetables and we just let them know if we need a night off,” she said.