What is the essence of school PE to you?  Trudging through the icy mud of the cross country track on a wet winter morning?  Shimmying up and down the wall bars until your hands ache?  Perhaps it might be something as simple as an opportunity to play tennis, football or hockey in the playground.  But elite sports development?  Doubtful.

Not everyone’s school PE career is particularly distinguished, nor do we all have overly fond memories of the mandatory gym time.  But what would certainly make PE more worthwhile would be if there were quality facilities (no more cold showers) and equipment (no more antique wooden tennis racquets), highly trained teachers, well structured classes, and the opportunity to improve in your sport, every single lesson.

An impossible dream?  For many of us, perhaps.  But not for a selection of lucky youngsters in Glasgow.  For them, every day is PE day.  Every day they play their favourite sport.  And every day they get that little bit better.  One day they may even represent their country.  At least that’s the plan.  Because they are the lucky alumni of the Glasgow School of Sport at Bellahouston Academy, Scotland and Britain’s first school dedicated to sporting excellence.

The logic is simple.  The school has five core sports – athletics, badminton, gymnastics, hockey and swimming.  A panel of experts select Scotland’s best young talent in these sports, and take on the responsibility of ensuring these children enjoy an education in their sport that can help take them to the very top in their adulthood.

Pupils follow a balanced curriculum of academic studies, which offers up to twelve hours of high performance coaching a week. The coaching team comprises of twenty coaches, including four strength and conditioning coaches who ensure athletes are conditioned for their sport. A sports medicine and sports science programme also underpins each sport.

Of course, the core sports weren’t chosen haphazardly.  More obvious options like football and rugby already enjoy high quality development programmes in individual schools and clubs under the stewardship of their governing bodies.  The niche in the market was there for the taking, much to the delight of smaller sports such as badminton, who often miss out on such opportunities to develop its youngsters due to financial constraints.

The school aims to ensure Scotland can compete with and win against the best on the world stage, the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games – a fact made all the more significant when both of these events will (hopefully) be held on British soil within the next ten years.  The school’s athletes of today are Scotland’s potential heroes of tomorrow. 

Angie Porter has been Director of the School of Sport since its inception in 1999.  Eight years on, she has witnessed the first full cycle of pupils to attend the school from year one jitters through to sixth form celebrations.  And she is very proud of the record the school has built in those few years.

“Over sixty of our pupils have represented Scotland, which is a phenomenal amount of youngsters.  We have gold and silver medallists from the Commonwealth Youth Games, [swimmers Rebecca Hillis and Charles Mills] and hockey player Kenny Bain was at the Youth Olympics and got a silver medal.”

When the school first opened they advertised nationally for enrolments, held open days and head-hunted promising kids in their final year at primary school.  Now they have come full circle, and are actually being forced to turn potential pupils away, such is the level of desire to get on the books.  The school receives up to 150 serious applications (as in ones they need to realistically consider) for each new annual intake.  Of that they can only accept 20 per year for first year entry.  So the bar is set understandably high for this once in a lifetime stepping stone to success.

“Every year we are inundated with applications and this is where it comes down to identifying youngsters who are talented and committed not only to their sport, but their schooling as well,” Angie says.  “If the youngsters already meet the criteria then we would call forward the most talented youngsters based on their reports from their coach.”

Several years ago the school introduced later entry points in S3 and S5/6 for youngsters who are late developers or who may have missed selection first time round. As the school grows in reputation more and more youngsters are taking advantage of this opportunity and over sixty have gained places in the national sports school.

Care is always taken to ensure that the development of pupils is not compromised.  It is quality over quantity.  A focus on a select few rather than pandering to the masses, according to Angie.

“At the moment we have reached the stage where our pupils are becoming more successful and they need more resources put into competition opportunities and training camps. We have a fine balance between providing high quality programmes and services for the youngsters that are already in the school, and identifying ones to come in and join the programme.”

And what is the benchmark that the school sets itself?  “The success of the Glasgow School of Sport is measured in a lot of different ways. In terms of pupil performances, which come first and foremost, we need to make a difference.  We need to be getting more youngsters to be successful in their sport.”

On a tour of the school, Angie points out all the facilities they have in place.  There are large, spacious gym halls for indoor practice; a hi-tec computer lab where pupils can learn sport theory, and a gym that would be the envy of schools and clubs across the country.  And the best bit is all this equipment is utilized regularly and, more importantly, properly and professionally.  There are experts in place on every corner to ensure athletic and personal development is fully optimised.

Yet, at the same time, this sports haven has a distinctly ‘schooly’ feel about it.  The kids are polite, disciplined and walk calmly from class to class.  There are notice boards and records of achievement on the walls.  There is even the distinctly annoying drone of the school bell (or in this case, school buzzer).  It is, in essence, exactly as you would imagine a school of sport to be.  There are no pretensions of greatness, just somewhere children can go to learn to be the best they can be, like any other school.

And Angie, like the school itself, is under no false illusions of grandeur.  She knows the school is only the beginning of the journey for these talented teenagers.  “We are only a part of the sports pathway.  Youngsters who are successful need to move on, they need to be in places like the area institutes, they need to be in strong performance squads through governing bodies. Equally, if they are not successful here, they need to be in a participation club so they are not lost to the sport.  They might even want to try another sport.”

Susan Ahrens is the school’s High Performance Hockey Coach.  And she is the perfect example of the standard of coaching staff the school demands.  Ahrens (formerly Gilmour) is one of Scotland’s all time great hockey players, representing her country over 160 times including two world cups, and playing to the highest level in the hockey powerhouses of the Netherlands, Australia and Germany. 

Expecting her first child this summer, Susan reflects upon how things have changed since she took on her role at the turn of the century.  “When I first came here we had only seven hockey players.  But that’s why I’m still here – it is such an exciting environment to be in, and you can see the progress.  We now have over 30 hockey players.  A lot of them have gone onto junior international programmes.  Kenny Bain has made it into the senior men’s squad, and Kimi Bright got her first cap for the women last month.”

Susan emphasis that although the programme is based around developing elite hockey players, the pupils are not bottlenecked into an athletically narrow field in terms of versatility. 

“First and second year pupils do generic exercises, just to enhance their movement skills.  They do flexibility sessions, and older pupils do pool recovery sessions.  They all do strength and conditioning training.  So it’s not just hockey, hockey and more hockey.”

She added: “As of next year we are going to do multi-sport generic sessions.  I think that’s vital, even so these young kids can socialise.  That’s for coordination, balance, agility.  There is evidence here that if you put a long term plan in place, it works.”

The impact that the school has had in its short life has already been significant.  60 athletes with representative honours is nothing to be sniffed at.  And, importantly, as Angie hastens to reinforce, the school is committed to not just producing high performance athletes, but high performance people.

“We like to think we are all about sportsmanship, working as part of a team and recognising and setting yourself goals throughout life, as well as working hard to achieve them.” 

The Glasgow School of Sport has already set about fulfilling those ambitions for dozens of Scottish kids, and there is no reason to suggest why they won’t continue to do so.

Learn more at the school's website: www.glasgowschoolofsportbellahoustonacademy.co.uk

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