Panathlon has been part of the sporting provision across the Humber for many years, with offerings across primary and secondary, from swimming to boccia to ten-pin bowling – and with more and more schools and young people joining in, this is set to continue for a long time to come.
Alex Sherwood heads up Hull Active Schools and is a school games organiser for the city, working closely with the neighbouring areas – and they already have the dates for next academic year’s county Panathlon events in the diary, meaning they are able to adjust their calendars around those pathways.
“Panathlon’s got a really, really strong presence in Hull and the wider Humber county area that has been built up over several academic years,” he says.
“The one thing that our schools value is the nature of the events in general – all the activities that are tailored to suit the needs of their kids, how they can be changed quite quickly and easily to suit all the varying needs of the schools that are attending and the children that participate.
“Pre-Covid, we mostly worked with primary school PE coordinators and secondary heads of PE only. Now through Panathlon, we have as much direct contact with the school’s SENCO departments and SENCO coordinators, so what it’s helped us do is give more confidence to non-PE staff to come and attend the physical activity events.”
That means that more school staff are more confident taking their children out of school to participate in a Panathlon event – meaning more young people get to benefit.
Plus, of course, there are the medals and trophies on offer.
“Panathlon events are always one of our first ones to fully book up and sell out with the schools because of the branding of Panathlon: the certificates, the medals, the trophies that are up for grabs, they’re all fantastic. The schools are now really familiar with that and those opportunities and they jump at the chance to to try and get one of the trophies back at school!”
Alex also appreciates the leadership opportunities Panathlon events offer young people.
“The school I’m based at, we’ve taken kids this year to do the Panathlon swim leadership, we’ve done the multi sport, boccia, kurling, and that’s a big part of it for us. Our sports leaders in Year 9 get more out of the Panathlon events than they do a traditional sport events; they get much better experience as a leader to develop their social and communication skills.”
