Vaibhav Goel, Year 12
Sports is a crucial part of our the secondary school curriculum – for all students. For IB students, sports encourage us to stay fit and PE classes fill up our activity requirement for CAS.
The question posed to the student body was: Should LGB have a sports day?
The following voting options were available:
- Yes, I love sports day because I enjoy and excel in such activities!
- Yes, I like sports day however sports aren’t my strongest suit. I do it for the school spirit.
- No, sports day just isn’t my kind of thing. I’m probably not going to participate.
- No, we come to school to learn not to play sports!
65% of the students that voted believed that LGB should have a sports day, whether it was due to them excelling in sports or simply because they wanted to increase team and school spirit. Meanwhile, 35% of students would much rather not have a sports day, mostly because they have no desire or intention to participate. Why did students seem to be unenthusiastic about sports day this year in particular? It could be because of the weather this year, which wasn’t at its greatest on that Monday afternoon. In addition, the teamwork was not at its best and every sports section was either crowded or had a filled up bench.
For Y12 sports afternoon, the following activities were offered: badminton, volleyball, football and basketball and each mentor group took its turn to participate in every sport. Unfortunately, the sports day stopped when it started raining and this happened before all the mentor groups had had the chance to participate in their final rotation. Many were disappointed and upset. However, some did get what they had hoped for as they got to leave campus early.
Something that enraged many (but also made the more inactive people happy) was the massive number of people in substitution. Some people were not happy that they did not get to play much while others were happy because of that exact reason. The badminton court was described as “a complete mess” by one student. Because it was extremely crowded, people had to play in a quarter of a normal field and still had to wait. Additionally, the lack of badminton rackets only made the situation worse.
Overall, sports day can be a fun time for mentor classes to bond and to get to know each other better; however, many people seem to enjoy it. Referring back to the question, maybe it would be better if sports day was optional for some students – although, they’d be missing out on a lot of fun.
