Treloar School & College wins Daily Telegraph National Sports Matters Award

Treloar School & College wins the Daily Telegraph National Sports matters award for Excellence in Disabled Sport. Treloar School is at the forefront of the development of disability sport, espousing high levels of participation.

[UKPRwire, Fri Nov 21 2008] Three recent former pupils, David Smith, Dan Bentley and Danielle Watts, represented Great Britain in boccia at the Beijing Paralympics, where they won the gold medal.

The “school sports matters” campaign highlights the achievements of sport in the school environment. This annual event, now in its 4th year looks to honour the very best schools, teachers, teams and individuals in the country.

Treloar School and College has a longstanding tradition of excellence in sport and actively encourages its students to achieve and excel in sport.

Treloar School and College says “The first half term of the academic year has been an exciting and productive one for sport at Treloar School. At the end of August Marie Devlin and Joshua Toomer represented the South East in Athletics at the UK School Games in Bath. Marie gained the bronze medal and a Personal Best (PB) in Discus, with Josh only narrowly missing out on the medals. We all looked on in awe at the spectacle of the Beijing Paralympics, where former school students Ben Rushgrove and David Smith won medals - Ben got Silver in the men's T36 100m, despite having a broken bone in his foot, and David helped the Great Britain Boccia Team to their first-ever Paralympic Gold medal. Swimmer Danielle Watts was attending her third Paralympics but failed to medal this time, swimming against others with lesser degrees of disability than herself. Head of PE Sandra King was also in Beijing, as part of the training for her secondment as Competition Manager for Boccia for the London Paralympics in 2012.

During October a group of students and staff went to the National Junior Games at Stoke Mandeville, returning with 6 Gold, 6 Silver and 4 Bronze medals between five students. This included a clean sweep of 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in the Boccia event, and Marie Devlin was 'talent-spotted' for Powerlifting and asked to attend a weekend training camp. The following week a Boccia team from the Y11 GCSE PE group won the South East Team Boccia event.

This award recognises the breadth of our curriculum offer to the students, the availability of sporting clubs, teams and activities provided by a wide range of staff, and the support given to students who achieve national and international sporting honours.