SPORT IN LOCKDOWN
We all know what Saturdays look like at Sevenoaks . Students in navy and red tracksuits stream into school , school bags on one shoulder , hockey bag slung over the other . Cricket bags grumble along , dragged behind . In the department , balls and bibs are allocated , packed lunches labelled , staff check registers to make sure that every student selected for a team is present in school so there are no nasty surprises when the U12D team arrive at the coach missing a Wing Defence . Giant coaches roll into Solefields car park . The first spills out 60 pupils from Cranleigh , ready for a block rugby fixture . Another coach exits , taking 50 girls to King ’ s Canterbury for their hockey matches . A jeep dragging a safety boat on a trailer follows another coach – 40 sailors are off to Bough Beech for a team racing tournament .
Saturdays at Sevenoaks have looked this way for years . The school prides itself on aiming for one hundred per cent participation in fixtures across the younger year groups and pretty much everyone knows the feeling of jumping on a coach with a packed lunch and hearing the cry ‘ NO POPCORN ON THE BUS !’ ringing down the aisle .
But this year , fixtures with other schools were impossible due to the pandemic . How would sport look without them ? How would sport look when students weren ’ t even in school ?
‘ Go and have a sip of water … and sanitise your hands !’ Returning to school in September 2020 was a huge shift for everyone , including the PE department . During the previous term , when the campus was closed , the department had adapted to deliver live Teams workouts , competing with the likes of national figures such as Joe Wicks , to deliver tailored , interactive sessions for the school community . But now they were presented with a new challenge : students on campus in bubbles and no fixtures with other schools .
86 SPORT REVIEW