Young Sports Coaches storm the Leaders for Life Convention
On Tuesday 23rd November, eleven Sixth Form students who are currently completing their Recruit into Coaching course went to Ashton Gate Stadium to take part in a day aimed at getting young coaches into the local community. The event was held by Sports Leaders UK – There were various challenges in the morning and our two teams battled against around 15 others from across the South West of England to win various amounts of funding for our schools sports partnerships. We were judged on our teamwork and communication skills and our abilities to work together to produce an original game from fifteen objects in a bag. One of our teams won a prize of £250 for the first challenge of brainstorming key qualities that an employer would look for when hiring staff. We then had a delicious dinner courtesy of the Co-operative and proceeded with the afternoons challenge. This involved our teams pitching a sporting idea in a ‘Dragons Den’ style which we would win funding for if the panel thought our event would be worthwhile and sustainable. Our ideas was a Sports Disability event for year 6/7 children with disabilities to come and try a range of indoor and outdoor activities from parachute games to orienteering. After a nervous wait, the judges announced that our disability event had one a £500 prize from another outside company – UnLtd who had seen our pitch and would like to get involved with helping us to run the event. Then, the main winner of the £500 prize from Sports Leaders UK was announced and to our surprise, our disability event had also won first place! We ended up taking away a massive £1000 for the running of our event which we hope to get going next spring. The other £250 will hopefully be spent on new kit for our coaches.