Playground to Podium Event - January 19th 2010 |
On Tuesday 19th January 2010, the Plymouth School Sports Partnerships of Plymstock and Sir John Hunt in conjunction with Plymouth City Council Sports Development Unit held the first Talent Identification Day for the Playground to Podium Scheme in Devon.
The Playground to Podium process creates a Pathway for talented athletes with a disability to access sport at Community, County and National Levels. The talent identification process is based on 10 tests which aim to highlight talent in various different areas including arm speed, leg strength, agility and coordination.
A pupil undergoes one of the agility tests
"The Playground to Podium framework outlines a set of interventions which collectively aim to support the achievement of a 5 hour offer for young disabled people, and ensure that those with a higher level of ability are identified and are able to access a talent pathway.
Playground to Podium focuses on the identification, development and support of talented young disabled athletes and players. The framework has been developed by the Youth Sport Trust, Sport England, UK Sport and the ParalympicsGB" (parasport website)
All the athletes undergo at least 8 of the tests with information then being inputted on the parasport website where their results are collated and the best athletes are then signposted towards the County Assessment Days which are attended by National Governing Bodies for Boccia, Table-Tennis, Wheelchair Basketball, Athletics and Football, aswell as swimming which will take place at a separate event. From this stage we would hope that some of the athletes will then become involved in representative pathways either at a County or National Level.
The event on Tuesday took place at the Devonshire Racquet and Health Club in Plymouth and was attended by over 100 pupils from both Special Schools and Mainstream Schools from across the city of Plymouth.
Each of the athletes took part in ten tests throughout the day, working in groups of eleven from different schools where the emphasis was on inclusion and also provided opportunities for integration and socialising amongst different schools. The activities were led by local Further Education students based at Plymouth City College and the groups each had a Further Education student with them taking them to each of the events and recording the results of their performances.
We were extremely privileged to be able to call on the huge presence that was the former Welsh International Rugby Union Captain Scott Quinnell. Scott spent almost all of the day with us, giving a hugely motivational speech in the morning and then spending the rest of the day with the athletes, talking to them, helping them and even competing with some of them.
Scott Quinnell with one of the athletes
The day was also attended by many members of the local media including local newspapers as well as BBC spotlight and as a result we have received a huge amount of publicity for the event and the young disabled athletes.
Not only has the event enabled us to begin to identify the young talented disabled athletes but, it has allowed us to access youngster who may not take part in sport outside of school and will help schools to achieve the 3 hour offer of Curriculum and extra-curricular PE.
As another exit route 5 disability sports clubs have been set up around the City and we are looking forward to many of these athletes attending these clubs on a regular basis.
Although this has been an extremely successful event which begins the LTAD pathway we are still hopeful that we will be able to gain access and create opportunities for participation for the rest of the 1000+ athletes with a disability within the City.
The next Identification day will take place in June of this year and will look at targeting other athletes who have not been able to access this opportunity.
The next stage for many of these athletes is the County Assessment Day which will take place on March 16th @ Brickfields in Plymouth where the athletes will undertake tests/tasters from various NGBs - ALL athletes that were selected should now have received a letter about this via their School/SSCO.
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