Most students are given a gift for graduation — Tommy Bennett won his.
The day after finishing school at Hobart’s Hutchins School, Bennett lined up at the Richmond Gift — a professional sprint race — and took out first place and a useful stack of spending money for his planned move north to study at Bond University.
“I spent a fair bit of the prizemoney on clothes and stuff for coming here,” he said.
“I got some new footy boots, but probably bought a heap of stuff I didn’t need too.”
That fast start sums up life for the Exercise and Sport Science student since arriving on the Gold Coast.
Now a key member of an undefeated Bull Sharks QFA side that has become the competition benchmark, Bennett is also juggling elite sprinting ambitions — training with former Stawell Gift winner Aaron Stubbs and Paris Olympics 100m relay sprinter Jacob Despard.
And he’s doing it while nursing a painful hip injury.
Bennett was one of Bond’s best in their Round 2 win over reigning premiers Coolangatta but paid the price. He flew to Victoria the next weekend for the Stawell Gift but had to scratch after warm-up.
“I went to Stawell, did the warm-up, but the hip didn’t hold up — which was a bit of a bummer,” he said.
He returned to the field in Round 4 for a strong win over Robina, pushing through the injury to help the Bull Sharks maintain their hot start.
“It was good — we got the win,” he said. “I was a bit sore at the end, but I’ve been working through it.
“The bye helped.”
Bennett was born to run.
His dad Troy was an Australian representative and under-20 200m champion. He was also a handy footballer who played against Bull Sharks director of football Andy Lovell back in Tasmania. And it was Troy who introduced young Tommy to athletics at Sandy Bay Harriers.
He started Little Athletics at 12 and went on to make national finals at three age levels.
But footy was never far away. Bennett played senior football in the Tasmanian State League for Kingsborough and lined up for the Tassie Devils in the Coates Talent League, starting as an under-ager in year 11 before a concussion halted his final school season.
That enforced break led to a summer focus on gift running, where he also made the podium at Burnie, finishing second in the 70m sprint and making the final in the 120m gift.
“I had a long time off footy because of concussion so that is why I was doing athletics which allowed me to perform well over the summer,” he said.
“When I arrived at Bond I hadn’t trained for footy in five or six months and it took a couple of weeks to get back into the swing.”
He’s back in it now, and loving university life both on and off the field.
Bennett, flatmate Miles Enders and Riewoldt Family AFL Excellence Scholarship recipients Finlay Gray and Nicholas Francis have been called into the Gold Coast Suns VFL program and are using those experiences to drive the Bull Sharks’ quest for a QFA premiership.
“I’m enjoying the course — it’s challenging but really relevant to my sporting career,” he said.
“And the footy is great.
“We are a really strong contending team and there are definitely ambitions to win a premiership and I’m excited by that as I have never won a premiership before at any level.
“The standard is a lot higher than I expected. I realised that when we played against Coolangatta, that was a high-standard game.”