It has been ten years since Dave Rohman first started working in collaboration with Panathlon.
The Youth Sports Trust inclusion lead for the area and school games organiser for Blackpool, he met for coffee with two of the Panathlon team back in 2016 to discuss how they could increase engagement across Lancashire.
“We’ve now got every school games organiser in Lancashire bought into an element of Panathlon across the county,” he says.
It helps that Dave has been a committed promoter of everything Panathlon can offer.
“I was seeing the benefit of what being involved had on the children in my area,” he says, adding that schools outside his region were getting in touch with him to ask how they could take part.
He started to encourage other school games organisers in Lancashire to organise Panathlon events, and gradually it took hold. There are now local and county-wide events on the programme – with more than 5,500 young people from over 600 schools engaging with the offer.
“We’ve now got all 14 Lancashire school games organisers involved at varying levels,” he explains.
“We’ve got ten-pin bowling, multi-sports, boccia, new age kurling on our county pathway, and then we’ve also got the hearing impairment bowling and football as a targeted intervention opportunity there as well.”
Dave, along with Panathlon event manager Debbie Davies, worked to support school games organisers as they introduced these innovations.
“Just by doing that hand holding, and a little bit of doing something for somebody first, they then realise that there’s nothing to be afraid of – ‘I can do this myself.’ So that’s what we’ve done year on year. We’ve identified the areas that were not doing as much, got them to a position where we can then leave them alone and then find the next person who needs that support.”
And it all stems from a meeting over coffee a decade ago – it’s no wonder Dave says, “It’s unbelievable.”
