November/December Sports Partnership Events
This half term started with two Handball development festivals for our Years 5/6 and 3/4 . The main aim of these festivals was to introduce a new sport to pupils that may not have had the opportunity to take part in Handball previously.
On the 3rd November we had 6 schools join us on the astro for an introduction to Handball. Initially focussing on skills of the game such as shooting, pass and move and communication skills, culminating in an opportunity to put these skills into practice whilst playing a number of games.
Each game played had a different focus, whether that was moving into a new space once the ball had been passed (rather than admiring their fantastic pass), or looking at a zone defence and returning to the circle to limit attack opportunities.
The following week we undertook a similar festival with year 3/4, a fantastic afternoon and yet again we managed to dodge the rain enabling 8 schools to participate. The pupils were involved in a number of activities, keep ball, pass and move and shooting practices, all key skills to help them prepare for a mini tournament. The pupils had a thoroughly great time throughout the afternoon and all went away having learnt a number of new skills and tactics based around Handball.
Both events were delivered by the a number of our fantastic leaders ranging from Year 9-11, as always I couldn’t run these events without them.
On the 17th November we delivered a developmental Indoor Athletics event, this allowed pupils from
all schools the opportunity to come and try the indoor athletics events, this may have been in preparation for the Pathway events later in the term or just to come and have a go. Activities on offer were triple jump, long jump, chest push, sprints using turning boards, amongst others. All participants came away having experienced all activities with lots of success. Fingers crossed those taking part in the pathway event are now fully prepped. Thanks to our Year 9 leaders for enabling this to happen.
The 8th December saw our final event of the term, which was the Indoor athletics pathway competition, 8 schools were in attendance. This was only going one way…… LOUD. As always it was a highly charged, exciting competition with approx. 160 pupils taking part across a range of Indoor athletics events. With double the participants came the doubling up of events and double the leaders, as always these guys were outstanding making sure that events were run efficiently and effectively. An amazing job well done. The winner of this event was St Marys Swanage with second place being ………., both of these schools will go on to represent the Purbeck area in the Christchurch v Purbeck event next term. The winner of that will then go on to represent the partnership in the sorest Indoor athletics competition held at Purbeck later in the year, Well done to all an excellent event as always.
So a bust term with lots to come next year. Thanks to everyone that supports the partnership, it continues to go from strength to strength and provides so many opportunities for children to take part, in particular those pupils that don’t ordinarily take part in activities outside of school.