How can we make Sports Day less dreaded, whether you're an 8-year-old with an egg and spoon or a 38-year-old being roped into a company-wide rounders tournament?
I absolutely empathise with every aspect of this! I was a keen bean, but average at best at basically everything sporty. Over my secondary school years, being slowly but consistently passed over for the hockey team, netball away matches or cross country competitions with other schools meant my enthusiasm slowly drained and my very academic parents delightedly resteered me in the direction of the STEM subjects. It took until basically my early 30s for my enthusiasm for sports to come back, and even then only because an old school friend described me as "sporty" at school, a term that took me totally by surprise. I'd never considered myself sporty because I wasn't competing at county level and earning trophies. So, basically, everyone loses, even those kids who actually LIKED athletics (tiny, anxiety-inducing-what-if-someone-sees-I'm-on-my-period athletics pants aside)
I used to hate sports day, but I think my school in the 00s had it right in some ways — for each event, every class sent someone (or a group) to compete and that meant we could choose if we got involved or not. Only snag was if you didn’t take part you had to sit on the tennis courts for hours on end, which provided no shelter from the sun whatsoever. I still remember my teacher remarking, “Why do they make everyone sit here? It’s like Guantanamo Bay!”
I absolutely empathise with every aspect of this! I was a keen bean, but average at best at basically everything sporty. Over my secondary school years, being slowly but consistently passed over for the hockey team, netball away matches or cross country competitions with other schools meant my enthusiasm slowly drained and my very academic parents delightedly resteered me in the direction of the STEM subjects. It took until basically my early 30s for my enthusiasm for sports to come back, and even then only because an old school friend described me as "sporty" at school, a term that took me totally by surprise. I'd never considered myself sporty because I wasn't competing at county level and earning trophies. So, basically, everyone loses, even those kids who actually LIKED athletics (tiny, anxiety-inducing-what-if-someone-sees-I'm-on-my-period athletics pants aside)
I used to hate sports day, but I think my school in the 00s had it right in some ways — for each event, every class sent someone (or a group) to compete and that meant we could choose if we got involved or not. Only snag was if you didn’t take part you had to sit on the tennis courts for hours on end, which provided no shelter from the sun whatsoever. I still remember my teacher remarking, “Why do they make everyone sit here? It’s like Guantanamo Bay!”