Brentwood Preparatory School Incipe 2017-18

Brentwood School Preparatory 86 this point goes to Johnny of Year 5, who managed the rare feat of taking a hat trick in our Under 11 A Team fixture against New Hall School. Well done Johnny. As well as Cricket and Tennis, Athletics obviously plays a huge part of the Trinity Term and all of our pupils were kept extremely busy running, jumping and throwing during lessons and games afternoons as skills were learnt and consolidated in the lead up to Sports Day. Prior to the biggest day in the Prep School sporting calendar, pupils in Year 3 and 4 were able to showcase the development made across the disciplines during the mini Olympics element of their Enrichment Week sporting programme, and all pupils have enjoyed challenging themselves in pursuit of their ‘personal best’ throughout the term - Growth Mindset in action! When the Summer Event and Sports Day did finally arrive, all pupils were able to enjoy a fantastic day of fun and competition with their peers, although we obviously must mention that pupils and staff from Heseltine House went home happiest that afternoon, having been crowned winners 2018! Trinity Term, and the sporting year as a whole, was celebrated at a Sports Assembly where all of the pupils were reminded of the achievements and progress they have made throughout 2017-18. Hopefully this past year has provided many moments of joy and some precious memories for the pupils, parents and staff of Brentwood Prep, and your sporting achievements this year should give you the appetite and confidence to be enthusiastic and healthy sportsmen and women for many years to come. Our Sporting Achievements The landscape of School Sport is ever changing, and schools need to keep abreast of current trends - educational, sporting and societal - in pursuit of a PE & Games programme that excites and engages boys and girls, hopefully encouraging them to be lifelong participants in sport and physical activity. A recent development for us at Brentwood Prep has been to introduce Cricket as the main team sport for girls in the Trinity Term, and with more opportunities for girls to play the game than ever before both inside and outside of school, hopefully the girls’ game will go from strength to strength. But what has fuelled the rise of sports like Cricket for girls…? Over recent years, we have witnessed a huge increase in the number of girls participating in what were traditionally considered to be ‘boys’ games’, such as football, rugby and cricket, fuelled in part by the increased exposure - long overdue - afforded such sports. This heightened profile has resulted in part from the superb successes of some of our elite womens sporting teams, generally eclipsing the exploits of their male contemporaries, with 2017 being a seminal year for women’s sport in England. Think back one year ago and the England Roses Rugby Team lost narrowly to New Zealand in the 2017 Women’s Rugby World Cup Final, the England Lionesses Football Team reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Women’s Euro 2017 and, most momentous of all, England Women’s Cricket Team won the ICC Women’s World Cup 2017. It was 2012 before women were able to compete in every event on the Olympic programme, 2016 before they could play professional rugby, and 2017 before they were finally allowed to join Muirfield golf club. In Cricketing terms, it was 2014 before women could play professional cricket in England and until 1976, women were not allowed to even step on to the outfield at Lord’s, never mind play cricket on it. This helps to highlight how attitudes are thankfully changing, and further successes in ‘traditional’ female sports such as the GB Women’s Hockey gold medal in 2016 and the dramatic Commonwealth gold achieved by England’s Netball Team earlier this year have provided further impetus and hopefully inspired more young girls to believe that This Girl Can (http://www.thisgirlcan.co.uk/ ). Of course there are multiple examples of pioneering sportswomen forging success in individual sporting disciplines Our Spin on Girls’ Sport too, with Simone Biles (Gymnastics) and Serena Williams (Tennis) to name two current examples who are every bit as recognisable and influential as their male counterparts, and arguable far more successful. Hopefully our current crop of Brentwood Prep girls can draw inspiration from these and other examples and maybe one day become sporting pioneers themselves. More important than this however, is that schools like ours offer all girls the opportunity and confidence to participate and compete in a variety of different sports and activities, and remember, in changing perceptions sometimes the first one you might need to change is your own, as evidenced by Sophie’s Girls’ Cricket report that follows... Growth Mindset. #ThisGirlCan. Girls cricket photos Girls’ Cricket At the beginning of the year, all girls were told that we were going to be doing Cricket instead of Rounders. Personally, I wasn’t too sure about this decision because I really love Rounders. However, when we practised in games and at Cricket club, I found I really enjoyed playing this sport with the other girls. Our U11 Girls’ Cricket team has really improved since we first started playing, as we did tremendously well in our first Cricket match against Chigwell. We batted and bowled really well, with some of our girls hitting fours. I was delighted to bowl a ‘maiden’ over (with the opposition scoring zero runs from my six bowls). The team worked extremely well together and WE WON!!! We were so excited when we found out we had beaten them by twenty-three runs, and even more excited when we were taken to have a match tea! Chigwell were very good hosts and made us feel very welcome. Thank you very much to Mr Sawyer and Mrs Trowell. I feel very proud to have been picked to play in our first ever Cricket match for the Prep school and I can’t wait to be picked again!