Sporting Centre of Excellence

Date published: 10th October 2019

North Norfolk District Council launched Year Four of its Sporting Centre of Excellence initiative, hosting an evening of speakers including Badminton Olympic medallist Gail Emms at Gresham’s School, Holt.

The aim of the initiative is to encourage children with a talent for sport to get involved and to take advantage of specialist coaching provided and the excellent facilities at Gresham’s School.

Now entering its fourth year, the sessions have produced many sporting achievers, including three winners at the County Championships and 11 children selected for the Norfolk Schools Athletics Association, amongst many others.

Emms gave a moving speech and later said of the event: “I was so thrilled to be able to speak to these children and their families about the joys of getting involved in sport. I truly hope to encourage and inspire young people to take advantage of the amazing opportunities on offer here which I could have only dreamed of when I was starting out. Not only is it important to be physically active for our health, but it’s exciting that those with real talent can progress and succeed if they want to.”

Marc Bradford, whose daughter is currently taking part in the programme, said: “My daughter has been attending the endurance running training due to an invitation after her achievements over the last year in numerous school and district competitions. We found the all the speakers entertaining, interesting, inspirational and relatable and left the evening with a broad smile and thinking about how lucky we are to have the chance to receive such top level training.

A massive thank you from both of us, to all of you who have been involved in setting up this training program and for hosting such an insightful evening.”

Under the programme, coaching sessions will be run from October during school term time including hockey, netball, cricket and running.