Will Cousens wants to see sport in Ballarat reach new heights.
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The Victoria Park Football Club president has spent the past year building up the club, with its new facilities offering new opportunities.
"I'd like to see [sporting groups] adopt a more professional approach to things," he said.
"We have to accept that there is better out there ... and we need to push towards that rather than settle because it's good in Ballarat.
"We need to look at what works elsewhere and keep striving to get better."
After COVID-19, the Victoria Park club was going through a rebuilding phase, Mr Cousens said.
He has been involved in the club since 2012 and wanted to help out more.
"We haven't always been successful," Mr Cousens said.
"But I have seen it be socially successful and then that's fallen away, so it needed a rebuild and a boost."
Mr Cousens has always loved a wide variety of sports.
"I was probably too scared of getting hurt to play football, and [soccer] was different to what other people were doing," he said.
When he left high school to start an apprenticeship, Mr Cousens wanted to have a social outlet, which is what kept him at the soccer club.
Soccer's growth in Ballarat has been a "bit of a rollercoaster", Mr Cousens said.
Major events like the FIFA World Cup and English Premier League were gaining more traction in Australia, which he said is keeping people engaged in the sport.
"What the Matildas did in 2023 is so huge for that growth of interest, especially for young girls and young women," Mr Cousens said.
Continuing community sport growth
Mr Cousens said it was important for him to give back to the club and encourage a cycle where young players want to continue to make the space better for the next generation of players.
"I was lucky, I had a good experience," he said.
"So then it's your job, if you have the ability, to give back to people and encourage those experiences for the new people coming through so they can lead on from there."
During his year as president, a big focus has been building up their women's program.
"We lost a lot of our teams through our lack of facilities," Mr Cousens said.
He said the new change rooms at Victoria Park mean there are more reasons to attract players back to the club.
"We have brought someone on board who specialised in women's recruitment," he said.
"That has slowly built up, and in [2024] we will be able to enter a women's team, which is huge for us."
Mr Cousens said groups like this "have an obligation" to support women's codes.
"It's a no brainer, it really needs to be essential."
Outside of the soccer club Mr Cousen works for a geotechnical engineering company.
They do the earthwork portion of the projects for roads and estate development projects.
"Whenever there is that classic photo with a shovel, we're usually out there at that stage in the background," he said.