Posted on: March 31st 2022
After some bleak sporting terms, the Spring sporting calendar literally sprung back into life! This term every child in years 3 to 6 have represented the school in either hockey or football fixtures (sometimes both), we have also had cross country events, weekend football tournaments, weekday football and hockey tournaments and even qualified for our first-ever ISA National football tournament! In 10 weeks we have played 29 fixtures, 8 tournaments and entered 5 cross country events! Next term we aim to be just as busy!
I’d love to highlight all of our amazing performances this term, but there are too many to talk about them all. Our U11 football squads deserve a mention for their attitude and teamwork in all their fixtures this term. They were really positive all the term, but I was particularly impressed in the ISA North London tournament where we were able to enter two teams and have all the boys play. Their support for each other and the enjoyment they had in their peers' success was a real credit to them all. I’d also like to highlight our cross country runners who, despite a disjointed weather and covid hit season, put in some great performances with Mikael, Mathieu, Zak and Charlotte qualifying for the nationals.
This busy term not only reminded me of what we have been missing, but also why we do what we do, and our philosophy behind it. All our fixtures and sporting events have a shared philosophy that boils down to 3 key aims and we start and finish all our fixtures by reinforcing them. They are; enjoyment, participation/inclusion and development. This simply means that for every event we should have fun and enjoy ourselves. This is not just for the players, but also the teachers, coaches and supporters. This is reflected in the way we behave, the positive attitudes we display and the way in which we communicate with each other. As the Director of Sport participation means that wherever possible everyone in years 3-6 should represent the school every term. As a coach, it also means that we have a rotation policy that enables every child to play in each game. Perhaps most importantly it means that as a player we get fully involved in every match and try our best to succeed and support our team. Lastly, we aim to improve in all we do from each experience that we have and get better both as an individual and as a member of a team.
You will note that winning is not one of the ways in which we judge our programme, nor is it a success criterion. That does not mean that we do not strive to win, but simply that we focus on what we can control, not those things that are governed by luck or our opponents. We want to develop a love of sport and healthy competition. We have no control over factors like the weather, referees or our opponent's abilities. How many races are won or lost by a small margin? How many matches are won by a goal? If we focus on our performance and attitude then we can have success regardless of the lucky goal or the mistake that someone made. We lost two football semi-finals this term on penalties, surely the unluckiest of results. The tournaments were a huge success regardless of the result.
I’d like to thank all our amazing staff at school who either helped coach or covered their colleague's lessons so that they could attend events. Miss Patten has also really improved our social media presence - check out all our school events on Instagram at NorfolkHouseSchool
