Hi All
Unfortunately Alan has not been able to get any petrol this week and no longer has enough to get to Loughton, never mind get home.
We are therefore left with no option but to cancel this week’s session of Sportability
 
If Alan does manage to get some petrol between now and tomorrow evening he will send an email to all parents and carers
 
Kind Regards
The Sportability Team

The weather was kind to us again last Saturday allowing a full session outside on the playground at Oak View School. We made the most of it with a session based around Cricket with skills practice on catching and throwing, as well as batting.
The session started, as always, with a warm up led by Ray and Ollie. It was straight in to some throwing and catching practice with the group splitting up in to pairs. Each pair had one tennis ball and a round disk on the ground. The aim was to bounce pass the ball to each other seeing if they could get the ball to bounce on the flat disk in the middle. Ideally it would be throw down on to the disk and the partner would catch the ball before taking their turn. The further the child was from the disk the harder it was to hit the target.
From there Ray led a catching game called Champion. All the kids lined up and when called Ray would throw a tennis ball to you. If you caught it you moved up the line, if you failed to catch it you moved down. At the end of the game the child at the top of the line was the Champion. The game was then spiced up a bit by adding a return throw in to the game. If you threw the ball and it was caught by Cliff ( Charlotte's Dad) in a bucket then you got to move up two spaces instead of one. 

After a quick drinks break it was on to throwing practice. The group split in to four with each group having their own wicket. A coach would roll the ball out to the first child in line and they had to pick the ball up and throw it at the stumps. Each child took it in turn and some progressed from under arm throwing to over arm and there was some very accurate throwing on display!
From there we moved to batting practice, hitting the ball off of plastic tees with the aim of getting it between two markers at the end of the playground. This was to emphasise aim and direction when batting.

After the main break we put everything together in a game of Three Tee Cricket.
The group split in to two teams. Those batting first had to take it in turns to hit three balls off of three tees. When they hit the balls then fielding team are not allowed to touch the balls until the last ball is hit. Once that last ball is hit the fielding team have to get all three balls and tees back to their starting position. In that time the batter has to run between two wickets as many times as possible. 

We had a fantastic session at Sportability on Saturday. The sun shone brightly and we made the most of it being outside on the school's playground playing Tennis. By the end of the session we had a few budding Emma Raducanu's out there on the court!

After a warm up led by Ray and Ollie the session got going with some basic skills. Balancing a tennis ball on a racket, hitting a ball up, bouncing it between racket and ground etc. The skill level increased as we went on and bouncing a ball on a racket then getting it  to stop dead on the racket was quite tricky! We then went on to some slalom games going around cones.

After a refreshment break it was on to a game of Build-a-Burger where the kids sandwich their tennis ball between two rackets. After going up and down the course without dropping the ball they then add a third person, another ball, another racket so there are now three rackets and at least two balls. The aim being to get as many as you can over several runs to build the layers without dropping any of the balls. Have a look at the photos below which probably demonstrate it a lot better than my explanation does.

After another drinks break we put up the Tennis nets for a couple of games of King / Queen of the Court. This is where the kids line up to hit a ball back over the net. The ball is thrown over by one of the coaches and the child must return it into the court without being caught. If they succeed they go to the back of the line and await the next round. Fail to return the ball in to the court or get caught then you join the catching team on the other side of the court.
In the end the last girl or boy left becomes the Queen or King of the court.
We had a couple of fantastic games with the first game actually being a tie between King Hal and Queen Charlotte. The second game Charlotte won outright so she was definitely Queen of the Court!

After the main break we moved inside for the last part of the session to play some Curling. The group split in to a few teams with the aim of getting as many stones inside the circle as possible. 

We had a great first session back after the summer holidays, on Saturday.
It was fantastic to see a number of familiar faces once again and get out in the fresh air to have fun playing sports.
This week focused around two sports, in the morning we played some hockey on the playground.  That started with a number of drills to familiarise the kids with controlling the tennis ball with the hockey stick, passing and shooting. Then, after a drinks break, the group split in to two teams to play a hockey match. There were some great performances but most notable was Pranav who was scoring goals literally for fun!

After the main break the fun moved indoors for some Boccia games, with a twist. Ray had some games that were based around rolling the boccia balls in turn to try and hit cones laid out of the hall floor. The first game was about which team could hit and collect the most cones. The game that followed had a twist whereby you could steal the opposing teams cones by hitting certain cones

At the end of the session it was no surprise that Pranav won the Star of the Week award, for his amazing performance in the hockey!
Well Done Pranav!

We look forward to another great session next weekend when we hope to see a few more of you back.

​If you know of any one else who would enjoy coming to our club then please invite them along or give them our website address or phone number. It would be great to see some new, young faces to join in the fun

See you next Saturday