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East Surrey College Hosts The Panathlon Challenge

On the 25 January 2024, East Surrey College had a great time hosting the Panathlon Challenge in partnership with Active Surrey in the Sports Hall.

Our Level 1 and 3 Sports Students were involved as leaders responsible for running each activity, making sure the children were having as much fun as possible and keeping track of the scores.

The Panathlon bought SEND children from local primary schools together to compete in teams across different activities, with the main rule to have fun and support each other.

Dom, Panathlon Event Manager, provided a bit of background to the event. “Panathlon has been going for 20 years. The idea is to give children who wouldn’t normally get those opportunities a chance to take part. A lot of these children would never have represented their school before or received a medal before. Everyone today is really getting involved and its great seeing the children have that smile whilst representing their school”

The event is run in partnership with Active Surrey as part of their mission to get as many people in the county as active as possible. Helen from Active Surrey commented, “Our team is responsible for making sure children are physically active and that they understand why they need to be physically active. This event is brilliant, the Panathlon foundation is fantastic. It’s so much fun seeing the children with their smiling faces cheer each other on.”

Our students were given some training before the event and then were each positioned at a different activity. Asked how our students have got on, Dom said “The leaders have done really well, a few of them were quite anxious at the beginning, unsure about exactly what to expect, but within their first activity they’ve just thrown themselves into it and their barriers have come straight down”

Asked how they have found today a few students provided their comments:

“Its been really wholesome and enjoyable. You have to adapt your delivery to meet the needs of each child, but we have been able to make it work really well.”

Keira, Sport Level 3 Student

“It started off a bit shakey, but as I have progressed I got much more confident in what I was doing and exactly what I was telling them to do. Its been a very positive day, the children are very motivated to be involved”.

Alfie, Sport Level 3 Student

Lily Franklin, Programme Manager for Business & Professional Services who organised the event today added “I am very proud of our students, who are a mixture of different levels. They’ve been able to showcase what they are learning in class by demonstrating their coaching abilities, and are also able to link it to the units they are studying at the moment, like Running a Sports Event and Sports Coaching. It’s also really good for us to work with our local primary schools and continue to build better relationships with them.”

The event was filled with joy, team work and smiles. If you have an interest in sports coaching and want to be taking part in activities like today then take a look at our Full-time Sports Courses or come to our upcoming open events to find out more.