The power of magic moments in sport

Schools have a responsibility to not only educate pupils in sport and exercise but to create magic moments that inspire, motivate and ignite true passion in their lives. Team sports are the optimum environment for this. Getting into team sports is straightforward through school as it is much harder to commit to a team sport without a fixed routine, timetable or opportunity to try out new activities. At Cranleigh we offer a variety of sports to provide the opportunity for a moment every term for each pupil to say “Wow, I love that”. These moments often come after showing resilience, working really hard to master a drill or technique and suddenly they’ve scored a goal in the final seconds or taken the winning catch. It’s not just the sense of achievement found through the joy from teammates that create those moments but the satisfaction of hard work paying off.

As children get older, meet new people and have families of their own they have a willingness to share their passion for sport with others in their lives. Often it is those adults who have memories of magic moments from childhood that sacrifice to drive their children to swimming in the early hours or pay subs to a hockey club. As Director of Sport at Cranleigh it is my job to create these moments so that when they are older they choose to participate and include others too. Sport is very inclusive at a grass-roots level so when it comes to getting involved our pupils get plenty of opportunity to just enjoy themselves.

In addition to specialist directors of individual sports such as Hockey and Netball the majority of our coaches are also academic teachers who look after teams from 1st team level to U14Es. Our teachers bring a pastoral side to sports sessions as they know what is going on with pupils off the pitch. A real personal approach where each child is coached in a way that suits them encourages these moments and an overall feeling of enjoyment in sessions. When visiting expert coaches from organisations such as London Irish RFC attend training sessions at Cranleigh we prioritise the lower teams and staff to take advantage of the rich training necessary to spark improvement, enjoyment and passion for the sport. We don’t prioritise sport over anything else, which makes for a healthy school. You can be excellent at something without it completely dominating the landscape of the education you receive at Cranleigh.