On the 4th of December, Panathlon delivered a Boccia Leaders Course to 12 students from Riddlesdown Collegiate in Croydon. It is a mainstream school but they have a few students with physical impairments who enjoy playing boccia. By running the session, the students learnt how to play and umpire. They also learnt how to adapt boccia so that everyone can play. This will now help lead them to run internal competitions at their school to further integrate mainstream and disabled students in sport.
“Thanks for running the course this morning. Our student’s get a lot from these practical training sessions and their ears pricked up when you talked about your experiences with the sport as I think a lot will go down the sports/ coaching route. We had heard of Boccia before, but had limited knowledge of the rules and adaptations you could make to involve everyone. This time next year we will have 3 students at the school who will be able to enter the Lord Taverners Boccia Competition and so now we have these resources and knowledge we can hopefully run some internal events as it does so much for our students both from the planning and organising side to the competing element. You saw today how our leaders interacted with the younger students who had a physical impairment and it’s great to see how these sessions bring them together.”
Liz Johnson, Teacher at Riddlesdown Collegiate
