National Schools Sports Week was held recently and is an annual nationwide event sponsored by Lloyds TSB. 

The week is Britain’s biggest school sporting event and the idea is to get as many schools and children to take part in an exciting week-long celebration of school sport.

On the 29th June, The Sweyne Park School hosted a Mini Olympics event for St. Nicholas Primary School and Glebe Junior School and UHI.  The event aimed to bring the magic and anticipation of London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to the pupils, and to inspire them to do more sport.

The idea of the day was also to embed the seven Olympic and Paralympic Values, which are friendship, respect, excellence, courage, determination, inspiration and equality.  In total fifty-eight key stage two pupils attended the event and twenty year nine pupils acted as team leaders.  Pupils were split into teams who have competed in the Olympics and Paralympics. The teams then rotated round a carousel of Olympic and Paralympics activities. Each team was led by two year 9 pupils from The Sweyne Park School.  Teams accumulated points and the overall winner was Spain.

During the event pupils had the opportunity to meet Alex Dowsett who is an international road cyclist who has trained with Lance Armstrong and is an Olympic hopeful.

The winning team received medals which were presented by Debbie Patmore of Lloyds TSB who sent the following email after the event, “I would like to thank you and your team for making my time at Sweyne Park School very memorable. It was so good to see children having so much fun and clearly enjoying themselves whilst being active.”  Every child who took part received a certificate, Lloyds TSB merchandise and stickers.

On the 13th July another event took place for Key Stage 1 pupils with forty-six in attendance and twenty, year nine pupils acted as team leaders.  This time it was Mexico who came out on top.

The 2 events were thoroughly enjoyed by all the children who attended and were made possible by funding from activerochford, the Community Activity Network for the Rochford District.

Chair of activerochford Dave Record commented, ‘We were delighted to be able to support these events and that so many of the pupils were able to try a variety of Olympic and Paralympic activities. activerochford is committed to delivering further projects across the District inspired by London 2012’