Netball rising star Courtney White has a new vehicle for her artistic talents — the shirts worn by the young athletes of the Great Southern Academy of Sport.

A GSAS athlete herself, White, who plays in the A1 competition for Narrikup and for the WA First Nations team, has designed the academy’s shirts which have been produced in time for NAIDOC Week and were launched in Albany on Monday.

She said the design represents the journeys undertaken by regional athletes in their quest to achieve in sport and is her first foray into fashion.

“I just started going with whatever I felt, beginning with the bottom of the design, just small random pieces,” she said.

“Then I started thinking of the journey the athletes undertake to get to a high level.

“The woven section represents not just us athletes but our supporters, families, coaches and even sponsors — everyone involved connecting together, working together to make us stronger.

“Next are the mountains of the Great Southern, representing the heights we need to climb through to achieve our dreams; training, commitment, hard work, pressure and sometimes tough situations.

“The yellow dots are the light on the other side — they are all the achievements, big and small, we reach along that climb.

“The blue curves of our ocean represent the flow of an athlete’s journey, the hard work against currents, injury and recovery.

“Then are the small, dot groups which represent the teams and competitions we attend, where we become part of new communities.

“Finally, the kangaroo tracks represent the trips to Perth we undertake almost every week.”

GSAS executive officer Danielle Carne said the idea for the shirts came from White and that it was an ideal opportunity to include Indigenous culture in the organisation’s branding.

“We realised we didn’t really have any Indigenous representation or culture in our branding and when Courtney said she could come up with something it seemed like a great opportunity,” she said.

“She paints but she had not done clothing design before so we had conversations about the colours and where the design would sit on the shirt.”

The organisation needed a sponsor as there was no budget for the re-design, so up stepped the Kadadjiny Aboriginal Corporation, whose logo is now on the shirt’s sleeve.

The training shirt will be worn by all the GSAS athletes and the organisation now has the rights to use the design across all its marketing.