My sporting view


Give us back the headaches


As I ate alfresco again today, sticking my sweetcorn to my mash potato to stop it blowing away, I reflect on an autumn term very differently from the previous thirty-two.


At the school I work as a PE teacher, we have been determined to have fun during this enforced period of no interschool fixtures and found that enthusiasm came pretty easily.


Heads of PE have lost the logistical nightmares of match days, coaches are no longer replying to emails which start ‘why has my son not been selected for the A team’ and pupils have focused on developing their core skills in a less competition driven environment.


Ditched are rushed lunches, behavioural issues on coaches, left-behind boots at other schools, last minute off-games replacements, lost property mountains, adverse weather conditions and the wrath of academic teachers squaring up to another pupil trying to leave their lesson too early.


Hitched are having lunch (some even with manners and lasting longer than seven minutes), time for


conversations, spontaneity and fresh ideas that suddenly have


time to be aired and shared during the school day.


So what have we been doing with all this new, refreshing wisdom or harmonious, wiff- waff-like chat, as Boris might more eloquently put it?


No contact rugby has levelled the playing field and many have enjoyed the advanced, touch version of the game. The last time we tackled anyone was several years ago, so the game for us hasn’t changed all that much.


We have offered cricket and hockey, the former missed, the latter a hit. A session mix of snatchable coaching tips, pupil- led warm-ups, conditioned games (most that end up looking like ‘bulldog’) and rekindled world cup glory, as Australia once again get trounced by England in an epic final, become the hallmarks of a successful and stress-free afternoon.


Throw in dodgeball (our pupils would play versions of this game forever, no exaggeration), a virtual swimming gala, skittle ball, an inter-house biathlon, water polo and pickle ball (all socially distanced with sanitising protocols, of course) and you get an enviable array of things to do, even during these testing times.


The pupil survey completed a


SPORTING VIEW


MY by Robin Thomas


week ago told us that the three-way multi-sport games programme has been engaging and fun and, without the possibility of a return to the norm before Christmas, more of the same is requested after half term.


Teachers met and agreed with this, but with one caveat – more built-in fitness required to get everyone back on track. So, back on track we will go with the bleep test, the one that sorts the sheep from the mountain goats in a matter of shuttles and offers further proof that too many of us over-indulged in lockdown craft, seesaw and virtually nothing.


It all sounds practically perfect in every way, Mary Poppins. So, I am wondering, why am I left with an emptiness that I dare not speak too loudly.


As I unhinge the remaining sweetcorn from a rocky crevice in my peaked potato – from where I also got my mountain goat metaphor, I can’t help but think it’s all a little too cosy. I catch myself revisiting that lovely moment PE teachers (very) occasionally get when they are standing at square leg in the brilliant sunshine watching their star, opening batsman smash another four off the opposition’s Goliath, thinking…


24 SCHOOL SPORT Issue No.81 January/February/March 2021 and I get paid to do this.


Then your square leg pulls you up short by asking if it’s good sportsmanship to laugh out loud at Goliath. I suggest, not to him, but to you that it’s the headaches that keep it real. They create the challenges that teachers like to overcome, offering a vital life line to job satisfaction.


With no spills, where are the thrills? When PE teachers are denied the opportunity to talk up the positives of moving down a team, apologise for finding the wet tracksuit top (funnily enough, where it was left) on the playing fields and explain to a spectator why their incessant (and wrong) coaching and unpleasant booming from the touchline is unacceptable, what else is there to get up for?


Ah but, I hear my reader say, teaching and learning is not about sorting things out (but now you come to mention it, isn’t it?) and if you are saying everything is now sorted, why don’t you just get on and teach and think yourself lucky?


The answer to that lies in the PE teacher’s quest for busyness and the buzz we get when things come together after hard lessons have been learnt (mostly about zipping up your kit bag so that nothing falls


Continued on page 47


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