Behind the scenes at Sports Day

Coach Core’s Sports Day is a fundraising event we put on every May. Corporate teams come together to compete in some classic, and inclusive, school sports day events in a battle to accrue the most points and be declared the winner. A key part of the event delivery are our apprentices and graduates, who run the activity stations, coach the teams, take the scores and ensure everyone is having a good time. One of our superstar apprentices – Kelly, from Essex – wrote up her experience of the day:

My day started out with picking up Nick, another apprentice who is doing the same Community Activator Coach Course as myself. We drove up to Wimbledon chatting about what we think the day is going to be about. When we arrived, we were greeted by the Coach Core team and shown around, where to put our things, where the food and drink were, toilets etc and then we were taken onto the Pitch. Walking out onto the pitch there were a whole row of coach core flags, it all felt very VIPish!  We were asked to pop over and help set one of the stations up. There were 8 stations in total made up of.

Athletics – A relay race to start, then going over to the second part which was a standing long jump.

The sack race – 2 teams doing a sack jumping relay.

The Three-Legged Race – Another relay, in pairs with 1 leg of each person tied together!

Circular Tennis – Teams take it in turn to bat the ball over the net, then run to the back of the line on the opposite side, can you get there in time before the ball comes back?

Blind egg and spoon slalom relay- the holder of the egg and spoon is blindfolded and is guided through the slalom course by their teammates voice directions.

Bean Bag Toss – Can you score more points by throwing your bean bags to the furthest hoops?

Skipping rope relay- consistently do 20 jumps then pass the rope to the next in your team, if you mess up your skip, you must restart.

Frisbee toss – Try to get your Frisbee’s in the chained net.  The closer you are, the more points you get for your team.

Now all the games were set up in the stations, we went to each station to have a test and a quick chat to make sure we all understood the rules and if anyone had any ideas to make things better. Once we all knew what we were doing, we got sent off for a bite to eat whilst the sports day teams started to turn up.

We were eventually called back out to the pitch where we sat in the stands with all the other Coach Core members. There were a mix of apprentices and Learning Coaches, we were teamed up as 1 apprentice and 1 LC. I was put onto the egg and spoon Race; Nick was placed on the next station along at the bean bag toss.

We sat and listened to the speeches from the head of Coach Core and a journey story from one of the past successful apprentices. Fish gave her speech too as well as some other sports personalities. Then it was time to get to our stations!!

The games were set up so that there was a 2-minute break for the teams to get to the station they needed to be, given a quick briefing before the claxon sounded and the games began. Each game lasted 8 minutes and at the end of each game the points were told to the team captains, and they would run those scores to the judicators at the main table.

Our first team arrived. My lead and I had decided to take a team each, tell them the rules and keep scores that way (as there was quite a bit of trying to cheaters). This meant we could keep an eye on the team and keep track of the scores easily. We soon realised that even though the rules were set, teams had found out ways of getting more from the rules. For example, there were 3 blindfolds and 3 egg and spoons. We had told the teams that each person blindfolded needed a guide and had to do the slalom, they could only guide by voice alone…  what we had not told them was they had to go one at a time. This meant that there were 3 blindfolded egg and spooners and 3 guides all trying to get round the slalom at once. This caused chaos because there was confusion in who was listening to what voice, directions were non existent and a few near misses with collisions! All in the aim to try and gain more points. But this resulted in much laughter, and you could really tell the teams who thought it out well and got round this issue. It was interesting to see and learn from. It was also interesting to hear the feedback from the teams, such as making them feel a little sick with not having their sight. Having their hearing feel strange with trying to figure out the different voices and background noises etc and just generally how losing one sense affected them and made a huge difference. Even cheering my teams on would confuse them!

At the end of all 12 rounds with the teams, we were done. It was time to pack up our station and help the others who had more equipment to put away. All the teams were called over to the corner for a photo op and a thank you speech.

Once we had done this it was time for food. We got our tokens and went to the pizza van. Got our food and drinks and just chilled with everyone else. Until the time came to announce the winners. We said our thank you’s and goodbyes and headed off back to the car to head back home.

All in all, it was a great day, well organised and I learnt a fair bit, from the Coach Core team and all the teams who were involved in the sports day. It was a great opportunity to go and be a part of the day and I would enjoy going to one again.