Leeds Rhinos Foundation Cluster Lead Officer Richard Cattley ran an indoor athletics tournament last week in the latest after school sports festival for the Armley Cluster Schools at Swallow Hill Community College.
The indoor athletics tournament was attended by five of the Armley primary schools who have competed in previous tournaments in netball, multi-sports, tag rugby and tag football, all organised by their cluster schools officer since September of this current academic year.
Richard Cattley, who splits his time coaching within the primary schools three days a week and aiding in the delivery of sport and organising cluster tournaments at the Swallow Hill Community College for the other two, this time welcomed schools from St Barts, Whingate, Holy Family, Castleton and Christchurch for the event.
The indoor athletics festival for the year 5 and 6 boys and girls, involved relay races, obstacle races, javelin, hurdles, standing long jump, triple jump, high jump and a chest pass event, all overseen and recorded by Richard and his team of sports leader volunteers.
The events have been well received by the cluster primary schools so far as they offer the schools an organised tournament for pupils to practice sports alongside the sporting competitions that are happening on the city wide basis in Leeds.
“We work well as a small partnership and have our regular meetings to decide what we’d like to take part in, there are some wider competitions that take part across the city so we try as a cluster to avoid a clash with those and spread the events out across the years, so it’s been really positive.” said Richard Cattley.
Headteacher at Holy Family Catholic Primary School Peter McQuillen-Strong commented on the effectiveness of the tournaments in bringing the Armley schools together:
“It’s invaluable really as we can only do so much in gathering the kids together, but communicating with all the schools, making sure there is a venue and making sure there is sports leaders that can come and help, is something we as a school could do, but it takes so much more time when they want to be in the classroom teaching, so having that external person to just organise it for us is invaluable.”
For more information on the Leeds Rhinos Partner Schools scheme visit the website at: http://www.leedsrugbyfoundation.org/sport/partner-schools.php
The video is of last Thursdays indoor athletics video can be viewed below: