Young Ambassadors at Twickenham - Leadership - John Fisher SSP

Young Ambassadors at Twickenham

On Tuesday 15th September hundreds of students travelled to their first ever youth ambassador conference; Liam and I travelled to Twickenham Stadium to attend our conference representing the partnership between Nonsuch High School and John Fisher Sports College.  When we got there me and Liam accompanied by Mrs Bell and the previous young ambassador from John Fisher signed in receiving our new Polo Shirts and programme for the day.

We were separated into groups with other young ambassadors from around the country and named after an Olympic games. The Olympic Games were considered to be the theme of this year’s conference with the excitement of the 2012 games approaching. Under our new names, Sydney, we listened to a presentation from various people involved in Ambassador system including former Olympian Derek Redmond who shared his Olympic experience; though predicted to finish in medal position, Derek tore his hamstring around 200ms away from the finish line after this tragedy the audience witnessed Redmond struggle over the finish line supported by his father. We all felt inspired and were moved by his determination, it showed us how if you believe in something so much that you can achieve anything even with the smallest chance of success.

We had seen sport in a new way, not just seeing it as a method to keeping fit but a way of bring communities together and by starting at the grass roots we could begin to achieve this. So, along with the rest of Sydney we began our workshop accompanied by former Olympic swimmer Adam Whitehead for an introduction to the Young Ambassadors role.

After a brief Olympics quiz and an inspirational talk on how we can make a difference we were set the challenge for this year’s conference. This year we were set the challenge of coming up with a national event for sports week which will take place during the week 28th June – 2nd July. Within our groups we had to come up with and decide on a proposition for the event. Sydney decided on a weeks worth of events, we then nominated people in the group to present the idea in front of the whole conference.

So after lunch we all gathered again to hear the ideas of every group. Ideas varied from a Usain Bolt action, to a blind folded walk. Our idea was to have a week of themed events at exactly twenty minutes past twelve, 2012, these events would be based upon the Olympics for example; classes would create their own country flag, create their own national advert and on the last day hold a mini Olympics all day where the children could participate in various activities. To our great surprise our idea won and was put into a national draw along with the other winning ideas from the other conferences around the country.

The whole day was really fun and we got to meet a variety of Olympians; Marian Batten, Gail Emms, Craig Heap, Michelle Robinson and Clare Strange. The outcome of the day was that we managed to brainstorm a lot of ideas for the year ahead of us. Hopefully, me and Liam can manage to organise a variety of activities including sports taster session, gymnastics competitions and parability days.

 By Jamie Roberts

Young Ambassador 2009

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