This was two days at Ely College for the price of one!  On the Thursday morning the Power2Inspire team taught some fantastic Year 12s all the different inclusive sports and then, on the Friday morning, they Year 12s led 60 Year 7s in a full PowerHouseGames. What a great event!

I was really impressed by how well the Y12s stepped up to run their first event.  Taking charge of each group of 10 (the Y7s were split equally between the six activities) was daunting but they grew in confidence and were able to start coaching as the rotation proceeded.  After a break we had the Y12s move to a different sport to extend their learning and to see how to develop their coaching to a new activity.

The six games were goalball, sitting netball, sitting volleyball, new age kurling, boccia, and with parachute games. The latter was a challenge as the Year 12s had to remember back to their childhood for suitable games. The parachute is a vital part of the inclusive games armoury as disabled youngsters can often only truly join in with this. The Y12s soon became imaginative, creating fun games for their younger fellow students to play.

The Year 7s had a great time, going by the noise and the comments!  One pupil asked Ms Bays, the teacher in charge:

“Can we do these games every week, miss!”

On the Thursday during the training, we were visited by the Principal, Simon Warburton, and head of Sixth Form, Adam Steels.  They were so intrigued they had to have a new age kurling match – won rather convincingly it has to be said, by Mr Warburton, who seemed very pleased with himself!