Young talents being lost due to decline in school sport, says Rotherham Harriers man
AN athletics chief has bemoaned the lack of time spent on sport in schools and believes it is leading to many youngsters being lost to healthy pursuits.
Official statistics show that PE hours in schools have been squeezed nationwide, with 11 to 14-year-olds hit the hardest.
And while the emphasis on classroom work is understandable, it can come at the cost of physical activity.
The impact is being felt by the likes of Rotherham Harriers Athletics Club.
Its young competitors continue to punch above their weight in regional and national competitions, but there isn’t enough of them.
Club secretary Steve Gaines said: “We have talents but we could do with a few more.
"For instance, we had only two girls in the U15s race at the recent English Cross Country Championships. Had we had another two chomping at the bit we would have been gunning for medal glory there as well.
"We didn’t have any teams in the U13 boys, U13 girls, U15 boys and U15 girls because we simply haven’t got the numbers.
"I don’t want that to appear negative, because the ones who are turning out running are very impressive. It is just a shame we don’t have a few more to make the grade.”
Mr Gaines says the reduction in sports time in schools was a recurring problem in South Yorkshire for some time.
"This is not recent,” he said. “It has been happening over some years and it has reduced the number of people that get exposed to athletics at school level.
"I don’t know whether there is a solution. It’s not easy to do anything when there seems to be a reluctance on the part of secondary school teachers. They are focussed on the amount of Grade C or above GCSEs that they achieve.
"I don’t think athletics is the sole sport that is penalised by this either. I think it affects a lot of other things like music and the arts.
"Rotherham consistently seems to produce good standard athletes and we are very fortunate that they come to use and develop their skills and move on.
"It is clear that there a lot of ability in the town and the surrounding area and somehow we would like to work with schools to try and introduced a system that identifies this talent at school and allows them to come along to the club and develop that.
“To do that they need to be running in schools and that’s why it’s difficult.”
Steve is well qualified to speak due his many years in athletics and draws a stark comparison between now and the past.
"When I was at secondary/grammar school, the teachers would run Saturday morning cross country clubs and it was all voluntary. It evaporated in the 1970s when the (Margaret) Thatcher doctrine said ‘you must instead do this instead’.
"What has happened since is a challenge not just for us but for all athletics clubs.
"The problem is that the local education authority now has very little influence over school Academies. They are almost completely independent of any central co-ordination now.
"We do work with the School Games organisers based at Wickersley School. They are the ones who liaise with us for the schools cross country.
"But it has markedly changed from what has been in the past. The amount of young people actively involved in school sport is much reduced now so identifying them and getting hold of them is a bigger problem that it used to be.”
Changes for the better might be on the horizon.
Herringthorpe Stadium’s manager Rachel Stothard looking into whether school kids can get access to the track for sessions either during schools hours or as an after-school club.
"She is receptive to that and we are talking about how we might do that,” added Steve. “We are working with the council to try and improve the circumstances we find ourselves in.
"We can only do what we can do.”