Friday Headlines
the weekly newsletter from EHS
EHS Girls Go Gold
21 September 2018
On Friday 14 September, ten P.E. GCSE and A-level students attended this year’s Girls Go Gold conference hosted by Tudor Hall School in Banbury.
The conference was opened by key note speaker James Shone, founder of ‘I Can & I Am’. James delivered a truly inspirational speech about how the discovery of a brain tumour, found when undergoing a medical assessment for a new job, turned his life around. He left hospital after two extensive operations, which saved his life but took most of his sight, with no job and diminished hope. James now embodies a positive attitude to life, a determination to turn setbacks into springboards and a passion to increase self-confidence in young people. This has led him to setting up the charity ‘I Can & I Am’ which raises valuable funds to enable James to speak to as many young people and educationalists as possible. His goal is to get young people to focus on what they can do and not on what they can’t. Emily Irving said about the speech “It’s so inspirational that one can have a mindset that enables you to stay positive throughout such difficult time and whatever challenging paths life throws your way.”
Throughout the morning we took part in a netball session with ex-England netball player Tamsin Greenway who, over the space of 11 years, gained 67 caps in total for England, earning two bronze World Cup medals and a bronze medal in the 2014 commonwealth games. In this session we did strength and conditioning exercises, which proved to be quite tiring. Maeve Taheny described it as “an eye opening experience…due to the vast amount of strength and conditioning drills available”. We then took part in function movement screening exercises to identify faulty movement patterns, which used simple exercises and tasks to highlight muscle asymmetries, weakness and tightness. A number of us found weaknesses.
During the lunch break we had the opportunity to take part in different games, such as the Batak reaction game, strike a light game and a bungee run. Heather Crombie won prizes for coming 1st and 2nd in the reaction games. Alongside this, the group of 12, including teachers enjoyed taking part in a selfie challenge to win personalised squad jackets. Our entry involved Emily Irving using her gymnastic skills to dive through the Instagram cut out frame into a forward roll. It was announced on Tuesday morning via twitter that we won this competition and we will be receiving our personalised jackets soon.
Following lunch, we had a speech from another of the keynote speakers, Gail Emms, a British badminton player who has achieved international success. She talked about her journey to getting the Olympic silver medal in Athens 2004, and the ups and downs she has faced. To finish off the day we went to a question and answer session held by broadcaster Claire Balding, with a number of famous sports stars on the panel answering the questions. Lydia Diwakar said “the panel session with Claire Balding gave us different perspectives about pursuing a sporting career as a woman, including those who hold a full time position of employment alongside playing sport at a professional level.”
Heather Crombie
Games Captain
EHS Girls Go Gold!
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