Girls Active Outdoors Day

Lloyds TSB has partnered with the Youth Sport Trust to deliver Lloyds TSB National School Sport Week between now and 2012 – an initiative that will use the power of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to inspire more young people across Britain to do more sport.

Schools from across Plymouth were invited to take part in an innovative initiative of a girls only event organised and hosted by Plymstock SSP (School Sports Partnership). The ethos of the day was all about getting involved and giving sport a try, so inspiring the young girls to lead an active and healthy lifestyle and pass this message on to others.

The Girls Active Outdoors Day saw 180 pupils sign up to try a range of different sports. The activities had been selected to include two Olympic sports, rowing and canoeing. This year, events at Plymouth ARC saw an exciting and challenging day consisting of various watersports including gig rowing and sculling as well as an ergo rowing challenge. The coaches for the events were as far as possible female with the ARA supporting the rowing activities along with help from local volunteers.

The schools attending had been asked to select girls who would be most pro-active in promoting the sports to their contemporaries by make a pledge to get 10 other girls signed up to try one of the activities, and so lead to an increase in participation. Hopefully, this has been achieved as throughout the day there was a high level of excitement, big smiles and a lot of excited chatter.

Plymstock SSP have been running indoor events for 4 years but this was their first venture into running an event in the wide open outdoors (held at the Plymouth Amateur Rowing Club on a tidal stretch of the River Tamar) and what a success it has proved to be judging by some of the comments of the girls coming off the activities: wow, fantastic, best fun ever. Even the ones who were a little apprehensive and frightened at the start ended up with big wide smiles. The near perfect weather; dry and warm with light winds meant that with the wet activities the girls were willing to fully participate (get soaked) and still enjoy themselves.

It’s hoped to build on the success of this event and have an even bigger and better one next year (bigger should be easy! better will take some work), so if you are a female coach in the south west and would like to get involved, then contact your local ARA contact for more information.