school sports

On and off during the past week I have heard Roger Black on the radio trying to improve sports for kids at school. Some kids only get 1 or maybe 2 hours of PE each week and many schools don’t even have a playing field. My 16yr old #2 son was listening to this with me on Tuesday on the way home from his college interview (he was offered a place on the spot). He commented that he doesn’t understand why some of the children at the school Roger was working with didn’t want to do PE. All my boys have been sporty, they have all played competitive football and the middle two cricket also. I explained to him that lots of girls don’t like sport as much as most boys do. I told him that for me when I was at school the worst part of having PE was the showers afterwards. At the school my boys go to there are shower facilities but I don’t know if they get much use. Certainly none of my boys have used them preferring to shower at home later.

Today my mum told me that she had heard Kelly Holmes talking about the work she has been doing going around schools improving the changing room facilities like making sure there were curtains on the showers. I found this particularly interesting as Kelly went to the same school as me although I had left before she started there. For me and many of the girls the showers were a nightmare. I was a very shy teenager and for me it was pure torture to have to use the communal shower. Girls going through puberty don’t want to have to walk naked across the changing room and through the shower with one teacher at each end making sure every girl went through and was at least wet when re emerging at the other end. I hope the same doesn’t still happen today. I was so relieved when I didn’t have to go through those showers anymore.