North Lanarkshire Primary Schools Enjoy Ravenscraig Sports Day

Around 1,500 P7 Primary School pupils from throughout North Lanarkshire have been taking part ina four day multi-sports activity programme at the £32m Ravenscraig Regional Sports Facility.

Jim Logue, Chairman of North Lanarkshire Leisure and Convenor of Learning & Leisure Services, said: “We wanted our pupils from throughout North Lanarkshire to experience and enjoy the wide range of facilities and sports that Ravenscraig Regional Sports Facility has to offer, so we have initially set aside four days from the busy programme at the centre so that this could happen.”

Blane Dodds, Chief Executive of North Lanarkshire Leisure, explains further: “The first day was on the 16^th February 2012 and we began with a mass warm up session with our Fitness Motivator team, with around 400 children in the football hall. Each school then enjoyed 40 minute taster sessions in football, rugby, handball, badminton, golf, athletics, tennis and fitness activities. The feedback has been tremendous, since a lot of the pupils hadn’t been in Ravenscraig before and were awestruck at the sheer size and diversity of activities that the facility has to offer.”

“Ravenscraig has been a huge success with hundreds of events since opening, some of which have been televised, and this latest event ensures that local schools are also included and we hope this will continue to raise the profile and get more children involved in sport than ever before. CBBC are currently screening the Ultimate Sports Day programme which was shot on location at Ravenscraig Regional Sports Facility last year and shows young talented athletes from Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales, mentored by some of our best known sports personalities compete against each other in some of North Lanarkshires best sports facilities. These young sport stars of the future are not much older than the P7 pupils we have here today and I would encourage them to tune into the programme which can also be found on the BBC iPlayer. I’m sure that this programme and today’s event will encourage some of our young people  to take part in a sport that they perhaps would not have thought of before and who knows we may have our next budding international athlete in our midst”.

Jim McCabe, Leader of North Lanarkshire Council, said: “It was wonderful to see so many youngsters enjoying themselves through active participation in sport. Ravenscraig is an ideal venue to bring so many children together to allow them to experience a whole range of different activities and I hope that we can build on the success of this event.

“Sport brings so many benefits to our young people and this type of event can only help introduce more people into sport and enjoyable physical activity”.

Christine Pollock, Executive Director of Learning & Leisure Services, added: “With the Olympics in London this year and the Commonwealth Games on our doorstep in Glasgow and Golf’s Ryder Cup coming home to Scotland in 2014 it is important that we take every opportunity to encourage children to get the taste of as many sports as possible.  Hopefully this will then inspire them to take up and keep participating in a sport that they really enjoy doing, linking in with local development programmes, clubs and sports organisations.”