The Maccabiah Games is the second-biggest sports tournament in the world after the Olympics and is open to juniors, masters and para-athletes. About 600 athletes participated this year. 

“It’s a lot of people, a lot of different ages, a lot of different sports, a lot of different issues that can come up, so we needed a tribunal that could deal with a range of different issues,

“We needed a tribunal to be ready with procedures and precedents and how we were going to approach issues. And we needed a pool of tribunal members that is diverse,” she explained. 

With three people sitting on a tribunal for a particular issue, it was necessary to assemble a pool of members that was large enough and diverse enough that there wouldn’t be conflicts. 

Ms Seemann assembled a team of Australian lawyers for the games. “It was fantastic to feel that we were really useful and we were there if we were needed,” she said. 

“We weren’t needed, and that was probably the sweetest outcome we could have sought.”

Ms Seemann also explained why the skills learnt in team sports are particularly useful in the workplace. 

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“Skills like teamwork, strategy, discipline, resilience, the things that we say are so important in adult life, the words that we throw around a lot, but that we don’t necessarily incorporate,” she said. 

“It doesn’t have to have been at a high level, but if somebody’s played team sport for a sustained period, I’ve got some basis for assuming they know something about how to work in a team, how to think ahead, how to take a few knocks and be able to get up again and keep trying, those things that we consider so important.”

“As an employer looking at CVs, I know that I gravitate to CVs of people who’ve played sport.”