Flames 3on3 Basketball Invitational
On Saturday, 10th February, we are hosting our first major Basketball tournament. It is open to U15s and has attracted top teams from across the scene in Thailand including top school teams from BISAC, two basketball academies and teams from Pattaya and Phuket.
We’re really excited to be amongst the first to host a 3on3 tournament. It’s a very exciting format played at one end of a bball court between two teams of three players. The short format games make scoring very important, and we should see lots of shooting and plenty of fast action.
Please feel free to come and support us in our Sports Hall at High School. We will be using our bleachers for the first, with games streamed live on our Facebook page.
Sports Days
We’re planning our annual House Sports Days for this term. To accommodate the large numbers in school, we’ll again have split days for all Year groups as follows:
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27 February: Year 7
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28 February: Year 8
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8 March: Year 10
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9 March: Year 9
This means that everyone will participate in a full athletics programme. In keeping with our approach to offer non-competitive roles, there will be a limited number of marshall places available for those who would rather help organise than compete.
Sign-ups will take place on Friday 2 February at a special House assembly. The students themselves decide what it is they’d like to do. There’ll be several opportunities available for each student (depending on House size) and we hope that everyone will select at least one event.
The strongest male and female athlete in each House in each Year group will participate in a separate pentathlon event, consisting of five compulsory events. This is a very unique opportunity for the most serious athletes, for which there is a separate trophy to recognise their achievements. They don’t compete in the regular events, giving more chances for others to win medals. We think this works very well and spreads the opportunity for success much wider.
U13 FOBISIA Games
Training resumes this week and continues until we leave for Phuket. If your child is part of the team, please try to ensure that they are present for all Friday training sessions. Thank you.
Fitness in Key Stage 3
One of our developments this year in PE is to replace our termly Bleep Test with a new exercise to engage our students in fitness and measure their progress.
Our target is that by the end of Year 9, all St Andrews students are able to run 1,500m - without walking!
In order to achieve this ambitious target, we’re committing to termly practices, starting at the KS2 target of 1,000m and building up over the nine terms that a student spends in KS3.
Early results show that currently, 92% of Year 9 are able to run 1,200m, with many capable of the full distance already. We have some work to do to be 100% successful and we hope that you will support your child in their efforts to get fit!
It’s been a pleasure to see how the fitter students have been supporting their peers during the practice to help the whole group to be successful, and the resilience shown by some of those who have found the target challenging.