Sports at School...

Listening to the radio on holiday there was a discussion about why we are so poor at producing top quality athletes and the point that was brought up was that in the early school stages, the teachers are not specialist sports teachers and the games we play are not related to anything. Young kids are not playing sports like tennis until they get to secondary schools often – 11, 12 years old, where as the best players in world sport are being picked up significantly earlier than this. It got me thinking about the sport we used to play at school and made me wonder if I had been given the opportunity to do more than just doing roly-poly’s on a thin rubber mat, could I be one of the best sports stars in the world?

In reality the answer is obviously no. So on with the musings.

My first memories of sports at school revolve around every child’s nightmare, sports day. For the elite few, this is their chance to impress relatives of every kid in school, whilst for the majority of pupils – myself included – it is the chance to make a complete jockey out of yourself on a monumental scale. That said, I have a few fond memories of sports day, not least that in year four. Back in those days we had to elect our two favourite events from a list derived straight from Athens including: the egg and spoon race, the bean bag race, the sack race and the tennis ball throw – all designed perfectly to make you look an idiot.

The events of choice for myself this year were the sack race which obviously involved climbing into a stinking wicker sack and proceeding to jump 100m, trying to avoid the inevitable fall over and the bean bag race – this involved something like running to a bean bag, bringing it back to a bucket, running to another bean bag, putting it in the bucket and then the same again, before running to the finishing line with the bucket, whilst balancing a bean bag on your head… Whoever thought this event up was a complete genius to put it bluntly, lessons learnt here have proved invaluable in future life – i.e. don’t put the bean bag too far forward as it will cover your eyes…

I first realised that I may have a chance of winning the coveted 1^st place sticker when we had the first practise for the sack race. I for some reason had the brilliant idea that if I put a foot in either corner and ran in the sack, rather than jumped that I may move slightly quicker than most… The starting pistol (teachers whistle) rang out and we sprinted the first 10 yards to the sack location where the struggle into sack lost valuable seconds (I made a mental note that I would have to improve my method of entry to the sack if I wanted to score a competitive time) but I managed to get my feet into the corners… I proceeded to run the 70 yards to the finish line without looking back – only when I crossed the finish line and fell out of the sack did I realise that everyone else taking up the traditional jumping motion was a good 50 yards behind still (I say everyone, the token kid was still trying to get into the sack at the start) – I had discovered the winning tactic. Sports day quickly came around and the pre-race atmosphere as we lined up at the start was electric. We were following the days big events, the mum’s and dad’s races. Focussing purely on the sack and then the finish line I got ready to go, the whistle went and I screamed out of the blocks to the sack. Endless practising had let me get the perfect entry to the sack and my feet were quickly in position and I was off… After about 30 yards though I realised something was wrong, somebody else was at the same level as me, in fact no, they were in front of me – using my tactic… try as I might I could not catch them and I had to settle for second best. Pipped to the line by somebody who had stolen my tactic. To say the beanbag race was a disaster would be an understatement, numerous fumbles and drops saw me finish near the back of the pack and so second in the sack race was to remain my best ever sports day finish… Looking back it is not a bad achievement, second best at the sack race in that year, in that school is pretty big news to put it bluntly.

The one thing that everyone seems to dread is the day when you get your days mixed up at school and forget your PE kit. You would think this would be a decent excuse not to do PE, but oh no… every school has one, the box of spares. Tucked away in this festering box are a ready supply of used rugby shirts and shorts which have barely seen the light of day in the past 10 years, let alone a box of Persil. The days of primary school PE where if you forgot your kit you could do the lesson in your underpants suddenly seem highly attractive – talking of which, does nobody else find it slightly odd that at primary school we were made to do PE in just our pants and that everybody got changed in front of the teacher, in the same class room??? Suddenly once in this borrowed kit you find yourself looking forward to doing cross country as you know the smell of your own body odour and scrote can only improve upon the original.

The showers after PE seemed to be the main cause for people forgetting their kit and for the unlucky few who didn’t manage to get away with it, this usually spelled disaster. In our school the shower system never worked, we all just ran through with our PE shorts on and that was classed as washing… For those who forgot their kit and were given the dreaded loan kit though, it was demanded that they return the kit before the showers (forgive us for thinking that the kit might be glad of clean… I swear some of it could almost have got up and played football itself…) resulting in low and behold, having to shower naked. This would lead to endless teasing and taunting from the other 60 clothed boys, particularly when it happened to the same people generally… I won’t name names (I have starred them out), but this resulted in numerous nicknames including Small C***g etc, a nickname obtained in year seven and no doubt lasting a good few years! Realising we never actually showered or for that matter washed, the showers were mostly scrapped the year after we joined the school and suddenly the amount of people forgetting their kits deliberately rose. It often seemed to me that the ones who forgot their kit, were those who were good at sport outside of school, which I think speaks volumes in itself.

Some aspects of the physical education taught at schools still baffle the hell out of me. I am sure up until about year 11 we were made to do gymnastics for example… This was fine for the 5% of students who took it seriously as a hobby and could actually do it, but for the 95% of us who didn’t it was a nightmare… we were to be assessed on our ability to do gymnastics. In a sport like football or rugby this is not a problem as if you put the effort in, it will show and you will get some marks, but try and do a handstand when you are not physically capable and you end up looking a complete berk in a pile of arms and legs… the assessment for 95% of us therefore consisted of the odd forward roll followed by a star jump over a vault... I would love to know what this provided me with, other than a crap mark on my report.

The best part of physical education for those of us who couldn’t really give a toss about school sport was when we got to use the weights room, a small room situated next to the gym full of antique fitness equipment including weights, cycling and rowing machines. This room was rarely monitored by teachers during the latter stages of school so we generally had the free run of the room. This resulted in groups of students seeing if they could lift the full load on the weight machines, but my personal favourite was the attempt by some students to carve a hole through the wall of the room, into the shower block on the other side of the wall - it was a walk in shower so you could actually walk into it, but at the time it seemed a great idea. Initially this started with some people battering the wall with the handles of the dumbbells, but then a genius noticed that one of the cycle machines was broken. The strap on the front had snapped, so when you cycled, the razor sharp wheel spun ridiculously fast making the perfect angle grinder… This chopped through the tiles and concrete ridiculously fast and progress was made in no time through the shower wall. Within days a plan had been hatched to carve a new tunnel into the car park. Any plans were quickly ruined however when the cycling machine was removed…We had found a new game that if you spun the wheel in the cycling machine and tilted it forward, the whole bike would skid across the floor at break neck speed. We set the bike up to do this and just as it flew across the floor into the rowing machine a teacher walked through the door. Sufficed to say we did our best to cover it up, making excuses such as “so and so fell off and it just happened”, but along with the bike wheel shaped scars in the walls, we didn’t stand much chance…

The other aspect of PE that I loved was when we were given free reign of the gym, the ropes, the climbing frame, the crash mats… for a thirteen/fourteen year old this spells one thing, FUN. For some reason the teachers did not seem to have a problem with people climbing up the walls to about 10m and then swinging off on a rope… Whilst the horrific floor and wood burns were ridiculously painful, I struggle to think of something more boystrous which we could have got up to…

Whether it is the case for everyone I don’t know, but my experiences it is safe to say probably didn’t help me become the world beating athlete I could (or not)… I think one can assume that at the age of fourteen, Roger Federer was probably not carving holes through the walls of the school gym, just as David Beckham was probably not fannying around on a small mat, attempting to complete just one backward role. So does something need to be done about the sports teachings in school or is it the pupils? I think it is safe to say in my instances at least it is a mixture of both – when we were doing something I and others were interested in it was great, but other times it was dire and we had to make our own fun… On this note, my next musings will discuss football hooliganism, stay tuned.