Sheffield Girls’ continues Olympic legacy with street sports week
After a chilly end to November our students will be back outside for sports lessons over the next week to experience street sports as part of our continued work on the legacy of the Tokyo Olympics.
Given the success of Skateboarding in the Olympics we have enlisted local company The House to give pupils in year 10 and 11 the opportunity to take part in skateboarding as part of their core PE lessons. The specialist skateboarding tutors visited on Friday 3rd and Wednesday 8th December to provide personalised tuition to our upper seniors.
One pupil said, “It was gratifying, empowering and exhilarating to do something I thought was difficult and scary.” Another said, “It was one of the best days ever. I really, really enjoyed it and I would 1000% recommend it to anyone. I would definitely do it again if I had the chance.”
Skateboarding was hailed as the break-out sport of the Tokyo games due to its daredevil style moves and attention-grabbing terminology - indeed many of us armchair observers were able to judge a ‘nosegrind’ or ‘shuvit’ by the end of the competition.
The Olympic committee added skateboarding to the Tokyo Games as a sport with more “urban” resonance which it hoped would attract a new generation of younger fans. Its inclusion in the Olympic programme was an important step to make sport more inclusive and diverse.
The sport is more accessible due to the minimal equipment requirements, minimal rule constraints, facility availability, venue access and limited costs involved.
At Sheffield Girls’ our aim is to provide all girls with engaging opportunities to participate in a diverse range of sports in order to promote the benefits of physical activity and encourage lifelong participation. We feel it is important to ride the wave of the Olympic street sports success and offer our older girls an alternative and ‘new’ sport which may wet their appetite to visit a local skate park, join a club or just enjoy the opportunity of a new experience during PE. Skateboarding provides the opportunity for individual creativity, unpredictable outcomes and a high level of self-expression and we’re sure our students will relish the challenge of catching some air.