In a place where children sit transfer tests how come everyone needs to be a winner on school sports day?

Belfast Telegraph

21-05-2025

A summer of World Cup football was to follow, Gerry Armstrong's goal against hosts Spain and all that when yer man got the ball. Sadly I had arrived home on Friday, June 25, from an end-of-primary-school week-long trip to the Isle of Man and fell asleep on the sofa at half-time, missing one of NI's greatest sporting moments.
The previous week had been spent sneaking out of the tent 'complaining' of a sore head to sneak peeks at matches in the teacher's centre where they were all crowded around the only TV.
And as the wonderful sporting moment rolled in, I enjoyed one of my own, claiming the sweetest Mars Bar of my life when I won the class long distance race (twice around the football pitch was a long way for the second smallest boy in the year) during school sports day. No Mars Bar has ever matched that slightly melted one. I can still remember licking the remains off my fingers, savouring the moment that taught me if I put the effort in, there would be a reward in the end.
I was also in the piggy back race that year. As one of the smallest, I was paired with one of the biggest boys, a seemingly fool-proof route to another victory. No one told us it would be a 'two-way' race. I had to carry him for the second leg and hopes of another Mars Bar melted in a heap of laughter as he could almost run when he was on my back with feet dragging on the ground before the inevitable collapse. There was the other side of the story. The taking part despite having no chance of winning.
No one cried because they didn't 'win'. Unclaimed chocolate bar prizes were shared out once the final race was run.
I was struck a few weeks ago watching a video of a school sports day on social media — a mum's race across a bumpy grass pitch, with one mum destroying the field of competitors.
It helped that she was Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, three times an Olympic gold medallist track and field sprinter.
Aged 38, she's still the third fastest female sprinter on the planet.
The other mums had barely left the line as she finished, still pushing herself to be the best she can be.
It was a lesson for all those watching, too. No matter what stage you are in life, giving your all to be the best you can be, whether you win or not, is a success in its own right.
'I only want to finish when I cross the line knowing I have given it everything,' the Jamaican said after the sports day event.
Strange, then, that so many schools have now made sports days 'non competitive'.
No need to push yourself to be better. It's the taking part that counts and that, it's believed, is reward in itself.
My daughter excelled in sports day through primary school. Imagine the horror when, in her final year, she learned there would be a 'non-competitive' event. In truth, she was left wondering why she had bothered. And by post-primary school, her enthusiasm had all but disappeared after children were split into groups to perform various sporting activities.
A day off work to watch children run around in a field. And the point of the 'exercise' was to 'take part' and feel 'included'. Strange, too, that these same schools take so much pride in pushing children in other ways. No A grade at GCSE has ever been awarded for making a few marks on a page to confirm 'I was there'.
Are children really so delicate these days that they can't be seen to come second in an egg and spoon race, while we still run transfer tests dividing success and failure?
Since when, in the wider world, has a job interview been successful for turning up and smiling sweetly despite not being equipped to do the job as required?
There's no protection from that disappointment. Being successful in life can be shaped by how we deal with our disappointments as well as how we handle our successes.
If they do believe that 'taking part' is all that's required, will they ever learn to push themselves to be better people in the future?
Frank Dick was the head of athletics coaching for Great Britain in the 1980s, working and inspiring the likes of Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett to Olympic glory. But much of his early work was further down the pecking order.
'I was Scottish national coach,' he recalled in a famous interview on what it means to be a winner, one that's well worth a watch.
'I went round the tracks, working with other coaches, and at one of the tracks a little girl comes up to me, nine years old, shouting Mr Dick, Mr Dick? With a name like mine, you never know what's coming, but she asks me if I would work with her. She wanted to run the 100 metres. I worked with her for a few weeks and she goes to her first race. She lines up with seven other kids. Bang, runs down the track, hurls herself at the line. Eighth out of eight in 18 seconds. She comes back upset, 'Mr Dick, I was last'. I said no, you were 18 seconds.
'You've smashed the 20-second barrier and I had you down for 19 seconds. You're a whole second fast than that. This means it's your lifetime best performance. Your own personal world record. In a few weeks time, she'll have another race. What does she think winning is now? If she does 17.9, she'll grab a flag and run round the track, because that's what winning is. It's being better today than you were yesterday, but we've killed our definition of a winner.
'The reason you go into tough arenas in life is to be challenged to perform better. You do not learn to climb mountains in life by going around them or asking someone for a ladder. You learn to climb mountains by climbing mountains.'
Defaulting to the lowest common denominator so everyone feels 'included' means only those who want to try to win leave sports day disappointed.
It is, in the end, not just about the winning, nor should it be simply about the taking part. A reward for taking part does nothing to provide an incentive to improve. Some parts of education seem to have lost sight of what they're there to do.
Surely it's better to bring up children to be the best they can be in whatever they choose to do, rather than emerge from their cotton wool wrapping as a snowflake to melt away like that Mars Bar left out on a sunny summer day sports day in 1982 when life turns out to be a hotter competition than they might have imagined.