Allianz Dare to Believe Festival

We took some of our year 4 children to the Manchester Indoor Athletics centre to take part in some paralympic sports and they got to meet a very inspiring Paralympic athlete.

On Thursday 29th November we took 10 very excited year 4 and 5 children tyo Manchester’s first ever Allianz Dare to Believe festival.

The festival was designed to allow children to take part in lots of different paralympic sports and also gave them the chance to proudly represent our school. By doing Paralympic sports the children were able to see the challenges that are faced by paralympic athletes, see the skill they have and learn a brand new sport.

The children were amazed when arriving at the athletics track by all the different equipment and after a quick lunch were treated to a very inspirational talk by Paralympic Gold Medal winning swimmer Liz Johnson who talked about how she’d overcame her disability to achieve amazing things.

The next bit was the fun part with the children getting chance to play all the different sports. The first of these was table cricket, which is a mix between cricket and table tennis ran by Lancashire Cricket Club.ZD and HJ seemed like naturals at this and hit lots of 6’s and 4’s.

Some children then played football and worked well individually to dribble around cones while keeping close control in a session ran by Manchester United. They then worked in two’s to pass through the

cones,which even Mr Ellis got involved in as he was partnered with MA who showed excellent movement. Some other children played rugby, with AP and ML showing super running skills.

The chidlren moved on to play seated Volleyball in a exciting game against St John Fisher. Both sides played really well and had some excellent rallies. Georgie in particular was good at this, with some superb serving. Most of all the children loved playing it!

After this we had a chance to play Boccia which is like a mix of dodgeball and bowling. The children had to throw their teams balls to knock others balls back to their side. The best part of this was we were coached how to play it by Liz Johnson alongside the excellent young leaders. GB was superb at this game as well as HS.

The next game the chidlren finally got to go on the track to run but there was a catch, they were blindfolded and had to work with a partner. The children accepted how difficult this was but did amazingly and I was so proud to see how they worked with children from other schools to achieve their goals.

The last event was learning how to move in a specially designed wheelchair for sport. While thinking about how this has helped athletes overcome their

challenges chidlren moved round very well and managed some excellent turns.

Chidlren left the arena having a great day, and both staff and pupils got to see that nothing should get in the way of chidlren achieving their potential and giving any activity a go.

The player of the match goes to everyone who attended this wonderful day.