By Mr Wallace, Sports Coach
At the end of the 2023/2024 school year, I would like to say a massive thank you to all of the children here at St Alban & St Stephen who have made this school year one of our most successful and eventful. Collectively as a school, we have reached new heights and achieved so much across so many different sports! We have often had to endure sub-zero temperatures, ice, muddy conditions, gale force winds and rain, but I hope you still enjoyed watching our young children giving it their all. To every child, I hope you’ve enjoyed this school year filled with different sports, and I hope you feel that your contribution to the team effort has been noticed and appreciated.
To begin the school year I had the pleasure of taking 6 of my sports ambassadors for their first leadership training day. The training that they had involved lots of new skills about being Sports Leaders. They spoke about how to be a good leader and learnt some important organisational skills so they were prepared to start leading sports at the school.
At our next event, our school football team were lucky enough to be invited to St Alban City’s local football tournament. The boys put in a brilliant effort throughout the whole tournament making it through to the third place play offs and actually winning that match. Later in the year, a team of our talented Year 6 footballers travelled to Colney Heath School to take part in a winner’s football tournament. Each of the local schools who had won their respected league was asked to play in one big tournament. Our team played magnificently and stole the show but unfortunately narrowly missed out on the final, meaning we finished the 3rd strongest team in the district – a massive congratulations to them!
Some of our fantastic Year 3 students took part in the local speed stacking competition. We entered a girls’ team and a boys’ team and both performed amazingly. They all produced some superb skills, along with some very fast hands. Well done for demonstrating, as always, great teamwork, communication skills and wonderfully sporting behaviour. In the end one of our boys was actually the second fastest boy in the competition at completing his stack!
We took a few of our Year 3 and 4’s to a quick cricket tournament against our local schools to see who would represent St Albans in the District Cricket Competition. They all played excellently producing some smashing runs, and hitting some balls very far! The children worked were exceptional that day narrowly missing out on that top spot but still coming second was an amazing achievement.
Our Netball teams took part in the District Competition this half term and played brilliantly. One team won all of their games but narrowly missing out on winning overall. The girls demonstrated excellent teamwork and communication skills and found space, making good tactical passes throughout the whole tournament. The girls came second overall, so well done!
The Year 4 netball team took part in this year’s season opening District competition. This is the first time they were together playing matches and against some really tricky teams. The team won all of their matches except one. They all communicated, passed and worked brilliantly as a team and every member was invaluable. Well done to the Year 4 netball team for coming in 2nd place in their group!
Our Year 6’s had the opportunity to play in the local quicksticks hockey tournament at Oakland’s college. The Year 6’s enjoyed a lovely day out scoring plenty of goals and showing real team togetherness. Unfortunately we did not top our group, but the team put in a real shift and still came out with plenty of smiles.
Some of our Year 4 children had a great morning taking part in a Tri-Golf festival. They were in competition against 7 other schools from our sports partnership and had to complete 8 golf-based challenges, scoring points each time. The challenges included using their putting, chipping and aiming skills. The children all played brilliantly and demonstrated excellent teamwork and sporting behaviour.
SAS took part in the district Athletics Competition at West minster lodge. They competed in sprint heats, sprint finals and relays. The children worked really hard and put in every effort to get great results in their races. Their teamwork was amazing and they supported each other brilliantly. The school as a whole was exceptional finishing 2nd overall in points across the whole district which is a massive achievement! So well done to everyone who took part.
Some of our sports ambassadors got the opportunity to work alongside our year 4 children in a variety of sporting activities, helping them and coaching them through each activity. It was great to see the older years helping the younger years and giving them the needed tips to thrive in each activity. The children were lucky enough to meet a GB Olympic athlete and even hold their medal!
For our final event of the year, I took some of our Year 3’s to Oaklands lions for their local basketball tournament. The team were absolutely brilliant winning all of their matches. The team work they showed, the resilience and willingness to give each other advice was mind blowing to watch. They should be very proud of each other as this was the first time as a group they had played basketball.
During the summer term, our year 6 girls took part in the District Cricket Competition at Clarence Park. They all played brilliantly producing some smashing runs, bowls and wickets. The children worked hard and especially harder as they ended up coaching themselves! It was a whole team effort and great to see them demonstrating some real leadership skills.
The year 4’s took part in a tag rugby competition at Old Verulamians. They displayed some excellent skills, teamwork and determination. The year 4’s take part in tag rugby outside of school and you could see their knowledge and understanding of the game really showed. They worked well together and played in every match not losing once! We were awarded first overall, so massive congratulations to them.
Some year 4’s took part in a Tennis festival against several other schools. They took part in a variety of challenges to show case their skills and talent. You gained a number of points depending how well you did on each challenge and the year 4’s absolutely smashed it, winning the whole competition!
Other sporting achievements:
A massive congratulations to our Year 6 football team for winning their league in incredible fashion.
Another congratulations to our Year 5 football team also winning their league.
A third successive football trophy this year – it was the girl’s football team also winning their league.
When we return in September we will be achieving much more, which I know many of you are already excited about and I am too. It has been a tough year, but we have had some great wins, our whole school game play has improved dramatically and we have all started playing as a real team showing our school values of friendship, determination, respect and unity.