Tuesday, March 17th 2009
Mary Rose School has joined forces with the Mary Rose Trust and Portsmouth Football club to provide the pupils with the opportunity to experience a variety of sporting activities as well as help identify talented young people with the potential to go further and may be take part in London 2012.
Tuesday 17th March saw the launch of this programme of activities with cycling as the focal point. Mary Rose School students and staff started the mammoth challenge of biking 5071 miles, the distance between Beijing and London. On the day itself a number of different activities were organised to ensure all pupils could experience cycling and take part in the challenge, these included, Sensory biking, both inside and out, Virtual biking using the Dream Bikes and X-Bikes from Trixter and the Elite system from GymKids, as well as wheelchair slaloming, and using adapted bikes on the MUGA. Young volunteers from the Respect and V programme supported the day, by helping all the students get the most out of their activities and in their free time also managed to complete a number of miles on the bikes towards the target!
Not only did pupils have great fun taking part in the activities but they also had the added bonus of meeting Glen Johnson, Hayden Mullins and John Utaka, players from Portsmouth Football Club. Glen, Hayden and John all contributed to the miles that Mary Rose School pledged to complete on the day as well as took time out to sign shirts and talk to the pupils about the activities they were doing.
To ensure that the school exceeded its pledge of 100 miles for the day, staff cycled around the school grounds after school and managed to complete over 20 miles.
A great day was had by all, with many miles being completed by all members of the tri – partnership and an excellent start being made to the project. The partnership is planning to extend the activities it develops over the coming years in the run-up to the Olympics and is already looking at putting into place a Boccia event in the forthcoming months.