How A Group Of Australian Athletes Found Purpose Post-Retirement

For many athletes, once they hang up their gloves, boots or other paraphernalia, it may seem easy to integrate with ‘regular’ life and put their sporting days behind them. But for many athletes, completely turning their back on their sporting days is never an option.

Some may go into coaching roles, others may turn to personal training or gym ownership. But one small team of former Australian sporting heroes have managed to maintain their love of staying active and do some good with it, by raising money for charities around the world.

Known as Athletes For Life, the troupe of former Aussie stars has come together and put themselves through a number of challenges since it was founded in 2019. These challenges include various running marathons and long-distance cycling events, and the next one on the calendar is the New York Marathon on November 7th, which they are running to raise funds for Team For Kids.

Athletes For Life was co-founded by Nick Youngquest, a former NRL winger who played for the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks, St. George Illawarra Dragons, Penrith Panthers and Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs. After Nick retired from rugby league around 2011, he took to running as a means to stay active. This snowballed into running marathons and eventually, in 2019, he decided to recruit other former athletes to join him on his quest.

Nick told DMARGE, “We started in 2019 and had plans to run the NY marathon in 2020, with my buddy, Mitch Doust. But that didn’t work out too well, as you can imagine.”

“I had been running marathons for years and supporting charities while doing so, and Mitch asked me why I do it. When I reflected, it had been the thing that filled a void for me since I had retired from rugby league.”

“It gave me some purpose, gave me structure and attainable goals. We both liked the idea of bringing athletes together around a common cause and our physical well-being, not just former athletes telling war stories at the pub over 20 years.”
Nick Youngquest

“Although, it has to be said, Athletes For Life was 100% created over a few beers,” he admits.

It’s Nick’s admission of filling a void that is the backbone of Athletes For Life. As he says, “the stories out there of former athletes’ difficulties in retirement are aplenty.” He also mentions the story of Paul Green, who tragically took his own life in August 2022, as just one example of how he hopes to help change the landscape of sport and to encourage anyone – although it must be said, men in particular – to lean on those around them if they need support.

“The years of honing your craft and dedicating your entire self to the one thing you love is a testament to elite sportspeople, but can also be of detriment to some in the transition,” he says.

“Loss of worth and purpose are common and trying to find a new meaning when sport is no longer available at the elite level… We want to help athletes discover and develop identities beyond the playing arena to help them derive value in various ways.”
Nick Youngquest

“Trying to see sport as what you do and not who you are is important, these people are fathers, sons, mates and sisters, but often they associate with the role of ‘sportsperson’ so heavily at the expense of these other roles. We hope to impact this.”

Indeed, Ben Lucas, former Cronulla Sharks player and now founder of Flow Athletic echoed Nick’s comments, saying, “I think Athletes For Life is a great initiative, as a lot of ex-athletes, including myself can understand the feeling of having a lack of purpose and having to start from square one again when they retire.”

“You go from the highest highs of the intensity of the game and being with your team to feeling a bit displaced.”
Ben Lucas

Since Ben retired from rugby league, he “started opening a number of PT studios. I worked around the clock on this business but as it was a franchise model, I didn’t get much say in terms of creativity and adding my own spin to it.”

“I definitely needed an outlet and I ended up running 35 marathons + ultras in the space of 5 years, while still running those businesses in order to give myself purpose. I found purpose when I launched Flow Athletic with Kate Kendall, but I still needed that challenge and drive and that’s what Athletes For Life is essentially trying to do for ex-athletes.”

So far, the vast majority of the Athletes For Life team are former NRL players, including Ben and the four Burgess brothers. But Nick has been able to recruit a number of other keen sportsmen and women, including big wave surfer and personal trainer Dean Jamieson as well as model and running enthusiast James Lorenzo. Nick hopes to eventually recruit athletes from anywhere and everywhere.

Ben also hopes this goal to come true, telling DMARGE, “It’s a great cause for connection and mental health, and ultimately the more the merrier.”

“Being from a rugby league background, it has been pretty easy to engage players from the NRL, but we intend to make this more global,” Nick relates.

“Our idea would be to have elite sportspeople from a range of sports come together to amplify the ability to raise money through running marathons and establishing a community of athletes from all walks of life, bonded by the commonality of sports.”

“Sport is a powerful platform to bring about change, so we want to have a positive impact on the lives of athletes who engage and the next generation of kids who look up to them.”
Nick Youngquest

For Dean Jamieson, founder of Lean Performance Gym in Taren Point, Sydney, and big wave surfer who has chased swell to the likes of “Fiji, Tahiti, Hawaii, Indonesia and around Australia,” joining Athletes For Life was a no-brainer.

“Nick and I have been friends for a long time; since we were kids,” he tells DMARGE.

“I had never run in an endurance event before, not even the Sutherland to Surf. In January 2022, the opportunity to run the Sydney Half Marathon came up with the Athletes For Life crew, which gave me just 4 months to train for 21.1km. I thought ‘ok, let’s do it.'”

“Once the training and race had been completed, the team asked if I was interested in running the New York Marathon. Initially, I thought, ‘Man, I don’t know if I can, I don’t know if I can run that far.'”

“But I agreed because I wanted to commit to it and show some leadership, I wanted to get outside my comfort zone and go somewhere I had never been with my training.”

“I wanted to show people that by applying consistency to your training, following a good program and turning up week in week out, you really can achieve things you didn’t think were possible.”
Dean Jamieson

“For me, running has helped keep me focused on training, knowing I was running the NY marathon has motivated me to get up in the cold and continue to train 4 days per week in winter. Knowing I have to run 42.2km has meant I wanted to miss zero workouts to ensure I’m not just physically ready, but mentally ready too.”

“I’m really proud to be running the New York Marathon with the Athletes for Life team and raising funds for Team for Kids. This gives the marathon a greater purpose and helps contribute to a cause far bigger than just myself.”

Ben, too, has found running to be invaluable for his mental health. “I had a pretty hard time during lockdown over the past two years,” he admits.

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“Running a fitness business that was forced to close with a family and 20 employees in tow was the toughest time of my life. After gaining around 10kgs, I decided to set myself a challenge of 5k a day for 365 days. I’m now about a month away from completing it.”

“It really helped my mindset and mental health and I have lost most of the weight too. Running has been my go to for my mind and mindset ever since I left footy. I absolutely love it for mental health, fitness and for seeing the world,” Ben says.

The Athletes For Life New York Marathon team will be raising funds for Team For Kids, a New York-based charity which, as Nick says, “develop and deploy programs for youth across the US. Some of these kids are only exposed to organised physical activity through these programs, something that is very different from our experience in Australia where we participated in so many sports as a kid.”

You can donate to Athletes For Life here. If you’re keen to get involved with the team, Nick says they’re working on a series of online coaching programs, due to be launched in 2023, that “are designed for transformation, and that are suitable to a broader audience and use the ‘athlete influence’ to guide participants along the journey.”