OUR VISION

We love watching students succeed and often winning a narrowly contested game brings smiles and excitement. But we need to remember that sport is not a zero-sum game where there must always be a winner and a loser. It is our intention to restructure the way we think about sport so that we can create opportunities for all pupils to have a great experience. This way the score simply takes care of itself. I would be extremely grateful if you could continue to support us and your child in their sporting journeys by reinforcing these points, among many others that you will pick up on as your child moves through their years at RGS.

George Browning Director of Sport

We encourage all pupils to head outdoors for sport in the summer term for Games and so our Senior programme will continue to be as diverse as ever with the reintroduction of sailing, as well as paddle boarding and trail running for those that wish to try something new. The traditional sports of athletics, tennis and, of course, cricket will run as the key sports during lower years Games sessions.

We are looking forward to welcoming back the students for the Summer Term, in 2023 and we have an exciting term of sport about to get underway with many cricket, athletics and tennis fixtures going on as well as our usual co-curricular programme of sport. One of the highlights of the sporting calendar will be Sports Day, scheduled for Friday 16 June. More information will follow on this soon. In the meantime, I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight a few key parts of our sport programme.

At RGS, we strongly believe in the power of sport to develop students into the best possible versions of themselves. Indeed, our vision is to develop great people through sport in a selfless, supportive and values-based environment where students strive to be involved in something bigger than themselves. We want to help nurture risk-taking, determination, authenticity, selflessness and adaptability in all students, as this is how we believe we will enable them to flourish. The score always comes second to the performance, and we rarely talk about results. I thought it would be useful to outline a few key things that you might see as you watch the students play as we strive deliver a modern approach to coaching sport in schools.

Once again, this term you will continue to see:

• Students taking responsibility for their own warm-ups, where possible, to enhance leadership and organisation.

• Students making decisions themselves, through collaboration with team-mates to encourage self-sufficiency and to develop creative problem solvers (this is often after guidance from teachers during training sessions).

• Teachers are unlikely to be shouting on from the side lines. It is important to us that the students learn during the game through their reflection and through the support of their peers. You will see less concurrent feedback from the side lines as students get older.

• The best players will not necessarily have more important roles than others. We want everyone to develop and therefore we must share opportunities with all students.

• Our intention is to create an environment where every student on the pitch has a great experience, both RGS students and our opposition. We want competitive games where the result hangs in the balance until as late as possible in the game. This keeps students engaged and enjoying sport as the perception of competence is important to all. We put collaboration with opposition above competition against opposition, so games can bring smiles and excitement.