INCLUSION and encouragement are the key to a Wombwell school’s sporting success.
For five out of the last six years, the athletics team at High View primary, on Newsome Avenue, has been crowned the best in the borough at the Barnsley indoor athletics competition.
And school sports co-ordinator Gordon Calvert said their winning streak could stretch back even further, if you included the years before the indoor competition began and the school competed as part of the School Sports Partnerships.
Making sport fun, accessible and essential for pupils is part of the culture at High View.
And the team’s continued success, spirit and ethos of support have earned them a Young Champions nomination.
Gordon said: “We have been running our athletics programme for quite a number of years now. And I would guess maybe eight or nine out of the past ten or so years we have won it, with one of those years being when we couldn’t enter.
“We are well known as a sporting school, but we are proud of how inclusive we are too. The athletics team is aimed at years five and six but we are always on the look out for special year fours who are performing a bit higher, and that’s how we get our rolling teams.
“I think encouragement, praise and having contact with places like the Chronicle means they get some recognition and can be proud of themselves when they do something. We also have assemblies and the staff are very good at encouraging them and being interested in how they are getting on.
“If you get lots of kids joining in then eventually you will find a champion somewhere.”
Gordon said sport forms an important part of the curriculum at High View.
“I read a news story about how some schools are dropping the arts and sport to focus on numeracy and literacy. But there is no question of that at High View. It is embedded down to the core of what we do. Everything has a knock on effect and sports can create healthy, happy children.
“We have ended up with two teams this year with about 37 children. All of them have taken part after school and in the build up to the competition. And all came along with us to the finals.
“We work with them from nursery to put on high quality PE lessons, right up to year six. They have got the basics fundamentally down so to get involved in things like the long jump, triple jump and throwing events is no big stretch for them. They are brilliant.”
