Something I’ve thought about for a while and prompted by the obesity thread.

Schools generally promote team sports, while those adults who still do some some sort of sport, tend to do individual sports.*
There’s probably all sorts of reasons for this;
It’s easier to supervise a load of kids if they’re all in the same game.
Team sports encourage teamwork.
Individual sports are easier to fit in round a busy lifestyle.

Would it be better if schools promoted the type of sports that people are more likely to carry on with in to adulthood ?

* I have no evidence to support this, other than knowing more runners, weightlifters and cyclists than footballers.

MTG… if you played for a football team you’d know at least 21 other men who played a team sport. If you played rugby this number would increase…

* I have no evidence to support this, other than knowing more runners, weightlifters and cyclists than footballers.

Think this is where you’re failing.

Schools promote team sports because it includes more people, thus more of their pupils can be said to be excellent if they win a trophy or something, rather then just one. It also encourages bonding etc. Also universities and even some colleges, and later on, jobs, will look for people who can work well in a team – team sports is a way of showing this and developing those skills.

On my solitary run last night I ran past 44 adult men playing football.

I’d suggest school should be making more of an effort developing sport/exercise as a desirable habit among girls.

Aye, I think that your point of view may hinge on the sports you do yourself. If you regularly play a team sport and play at a range of events then you pretty quickly get to know loads and loads of people who do a team sport as every team at the event has x people playing for them.

Team sport also teach or should teach other transferable skills / issues e.g.co-operation, empathy, organisation etc that probably aren’t so prevalent in individual activities. I don’t do team sport cos I want to succeed or fail on my own merits, not someone elses.

At my school it was a mix of team sports like football, rugby & cricket or individual stuff like most field & track events, cross country running, golf, tennis or swimming. Probably good to have as many options as possible, may as well try stuff. Except trailquests, the kids would be bored;o).

Hmmm… are there not enough vegans about to have vegan teams then?

i think schools need to do more to encourage kids to do sport they enjoy, rather than what they are down to do. i liked hockey at school but got to do it 6 weeks of the year (in pe) and once a week with the school team. the rest of the time i was trying to skive football/ badminton (other shit stuff) i only ever played cricket once (in 5 years) because i managed to just play tennis all summer by turning up to the tennis group instead. 🙂

if you played for a football team you’d know at least 21 other men who played a team sport

Good point, whatever your interests, you’re bound to know people with a similar interest.
I was just thinking of people I meet at random, not through cycling. I’d say I’ve met more canoeists and rock climbers than footballers.

PE might have changed since I was at school:
Summer – tennis, athletics
Winter – netball, hockey

I’d be interested to hear a current PE teacher’s opinion?

Team sport also teach or should teach other transferable skills / issues e.g.co-operation, empathy, organisation etc that probably aren’t so prevalent in individual activities

That could be it, too.
If schools are teaching life skills, not just academic qualifications, would an employer prefer to take on someone who has played in the school hockey team than a gymnast ?

Graham… you’re not meeting people entirely at random… there will be reasons why you and they are in the same place at the same time… factors that influenced your choices of career and choices of lifestyle.

Could be, I’m trying to think of people I have worked with, which may not be a representative sample of the population.

My school years were at the height of 80’s BMX, had quite a few very successful kids in my school racing at national level, no encouragement at all from the school.

I hope the Olympics etc will change some of the sports educational system, I beleive BMX racing is taught in some French schools (?)

Football is for Torchwood fans.

Our PE department has been teaching MTB for a year now. Got a job lot of entry level Giants and use our extensive field and neighbouring country park to teach basic bike skills etc. Regularly get coaches in from British Cycling too to run skills/race sessions too.

Kids seem to love it as a break from footie, netball, rugby etc.

Haven’t (yet) managed to get myself in on the bike teaching sadly.

slainte 🙂 rob

School sports usually consisted of being the last one picked and then being told to go stand over there out of the way. I really enjoyed PE. Just not very much at all.
I was quite a good cross country runner but it wasn’t rugby, football or cricket so I wasn’t allowed to do it. Cricket was ace – I’d stand somewhere over there for an hour with a book, then sit down for 59 minutes with a book then 6 or 7 seconds walking to the wicket and back ( I never put pads on cos it wasn’t worth it – I’d just stand near the wicket and tell them to chuck the ball then walk back).
Team sports are massively overrated.

The thing about school is that you always have a big bunch of kids ready to do what you say. So it makes organising team sports a lot easier! You don’t get kids saying ‘oh I can’t do 10am Wednesday, I’ve got to take the car in for servicing’ or some such.

The sport I am most suited to is Rugby, but it’s far too hard to take up as an adult.

Team sports are massively overrated.

You sound like a real individual. Do you work alone as well?

Molgrips – if you want to take up rugby, find your local club and tell them. I’ve coached loads of n00b adults before.

I was always quite good at sports at school. We used to be slows to take ourselfs off xc riding up mat Shirley hills. I was a well established runner at school and as far as I’m aware I still hold the school 1500meter record. (only cos the trophy is on the side in my room)

I would prefer team games as it was always a laugh.

The activities that take place in schools are chosen for a number of reasons – group size, funding available for equipment and facilities, specialism of staff, facilities available, student preference etc. We offer students at my school the opportunity to have input into their own curriculum – they can choose from loads of activities such as mountain biking, aerobics, badminton, weight lifting, and all the team sports. The large majority of students still tend to choose team sports rather than individual activities though.
In the Labour days, there was the huge obesity agenda which meant that schools were meant to offer activities that encouraged lifelong participation. The current agenda is the School Games – where all schools are encouraged to take place in a massive national competition structure. Great idea for all those kids who hate team sports, are always the last to be picked, and are totally put off by the idea of sport, right? Good one…

Footballs a great way to get and keep kids fit. IME most young boys enjoy it, no matter how hard some parents try to discourage them.
The thing with football is that the kids are getting fit whilst ‘playing’ or without noticing it.
Anyway that’s not the problem. Kids from 4 up love sport…anything. Whatever field you chuck them into they’ll do well, and they’ll keep doing well for some years.
The problem comes when they hit 14/15. Due to ‘distractions’ it’s when most kids drop out of sport, and the percentage that return some years later is very small.
I coached youth football for seven years, hardly any play now (15 year olds) I can only think of three out of the 50 kids still in sport.
I also know a familly who’s son and daughter were both down for ‘careers’ in kayaking? hit 15 and they didn’t want to know.
And my own son. 8 years in footbal, straight into CX and got 1st and 2nds, then road racing. Now at nearly 16 he does nothing.
The best you can do is to not give up hope, and have things in place for when people do want to do something.

Great idea for all those kids who hate team sports, are always the last to be picked, and are totally put off by the idea of sport, right?

I think you’ll find the notion of competition for kids comes from the backlash of having no competition for years. My god-daughter’s school was going to have a ‘non-competitive, all inclusive school sports day’, but the parents rebelled in horror.

If kids don’t get to understand competition at school, they will be a bit stunned when they hit the real world. A good mixture of sports ensures all shapes and sizes can do well (rugby as an example). Also – some less bright kids can excel at sport, some fat kids find something they enjoy and lose weight and they all learn teamwork.

You don’t engage kids to do sport by not doing sport.

Heavens forbid we get kids involved in competition. Next thing you know, there will be exams and tests and even tiers in the level of education kids recieve.

My school was a mix of team and individual sports season depending which i think worked well giving all tastes a chance.

We would do XC run prior to playing football or rugby.We also did gymnastics, volleyball, basketball,squash,badminton,hockey,athletics and cricket.

My chosen/fave was XC i was also in the school team, also 800m & 1500m during athletics season. Liked volleyball and badminton but disliked greatly football and rugby to a lesser degree.

However i can’t run for toffee anymore.

I think you’ll find the notion of competition for kids comes from the backlash of having no competition for years.

Bunkum. The School Sports Partnership programme so cleverly dismantled by Michael Gove was the most effective tool in providing state school pupils with PE and School Sport in the world, to the point that other nations voiced their respective voices about the absurdity of devolving its funding. The strict criteria for evidencing pupils participating in extra-curricular competition was an issue, but as a framework for competition it was excellent.

Your opinion is formed on the evidence of one example? Nice work!

Its got nowt to do with schools. They are driven by public opinion. Well if the public dont care about their kids health and fitness then the schools dont put much onus on it. The only time we hear about it is when they do a bit of news coverage about childhood obesity.

Give you an example. I have lived on the same housing estate for 11yrs. I actively play with my kids outside. Tennis, cricket, football, cycling etc etc etc. On friday my day consited of going swimming with my kids, then back to play football, then get the cricket out then a bike ride. How many other kids do you see doing this with their parents. In 11 yrs i havent seen another parent out running about. Its very sad.

Oh and the team versus individual sports thing is easy to explain. To be part of a team requires a certain level of competance. You dont get many adults who have never played football or rugby suddenly taking it up. Not saying pro standard but if you are in a team then normally it means you have justified your place. This is a much easier situation to get involved in when you are younger. As an individual on a bike you can be pretty much crap and still be able to participate. If we are talking things like running etc, well i know people who have little to no talent at running and have trained themselves to a point of being pretty handy long distance runners. Much more suitable to adult sports than childhood whereby its the talented ones that take part. Another reason cycling suits older people because its a sport that strength and endurance are just as valuable as skill and natural talent.

So team sports for

I am actually one of hose people that believe kids have amazing oppertunities these days. I cant think of a single sport that i my son or daughter came home and asked to try that i couldnt get them involved in. Its mainly down to the parents passing the buck and expecting their kids to be ‘gien’ oppertunities rather than taking them.

On the competition discussion well i believe wholeheartedly in competition. IMO no kid ever took part in anything not wanting to win. Dealing with losing is as important as being able to win. My son had pro trials this summer for a pro football team which were unfortunatly unsuccessfull. He was absolutely gutted for all of a day. Then he got on with it and carried on. I was prouder of his reaction than i was when he got asked to go for trials. You have to let kids be disspointed to make them mre determined to succeed

I agree with MTG, even if there are many people out there playing team sports in adulthood.

The basis for my agreement is the fact that, in Canada, where volleyball and basketball are the dominent PE-taught sports, there is almost no extra-mural take up of either sport. That this is so caused a re-think on the part of many provinces’ respective educational establishments in the direction of what they called ‘life sports’ – that is, sports that individuals could do over the course of their whole life. Wonderfully, these included cycling, climbing, XC skiing, and even opportunities for scuba diving.

So, while it may be the team sports promoted in British schools also enjoy extra-mural take-up, they are still limited in the degree to which they can be enjoyed long-term (think of a 60-year-old playing rugby as opposed to a 60-year-old cycling), warranting at least some exposure to what some Canadian educationalists call the ‘life sports’.

I disagree with the notion that cycling and running are necessarily individual sports. Almost all road and cross country races include a team prize and local road race (running) and cross country leagues are focused more on team performance than individual achievement. We regularly have over 40 runners of all abilities at our running club training nights and a healthy number stay on for a beer or 2 afterwards, which highlights the fact that camaraderie is equally important to the members as pure fitness.

But the difference between cycling or running and rugby, cricket, football, etc is that you can train on your own and, therefore, fit your training in around busy home and working life. Miss a session and you are only letting yourself down, as PE teachers are so find of saying, miss a rugby training session and the line out calls, 3/4 moves etc go to pot on Saturday.

Trailquesting in pairs, teamwork?