Uppingham Sports Scholarship Trip

Our Sports Scholars had a very informative afternoon at Uppingham on Friday where they took part in some sport specific coaching alongside some of Uppingham’s top performing athletes. This is a weekly session for all Uppingham Scholars so it was great to make this link and have the opportunity to join them. It was so lovely to see some of our former pupils too! We were greeted by Jenson G on arrival, met Matthew K (now an Upper Sixth cricket scholar!) joined Wilf H-S and Sophie T in an athletic development session and saw Poppy H, Annabel T, Georgina H and Charlie H on the team sheet board!

Our pupils were asked to opt into their preferred sport and it was great to see such a good range of activities being chosen by our scholars. This included Tennis, Cricket, Rugby, Hockey and Golf. 

The afternoon began with a practical session led by Uppingham staff. The children benefited enormously from this - not just the state of the art facilities but the specialist coaching and staff/athlete ratio. From Megan playing the Royal Dornoch course on the golf simulator to Rory and Josh facing fast paced balls in the cricket nets, the pupils certainly had their work cut out. The second part of the afternoon saw our scholars join Uppinghams 4th Form for an Athletic Development Session in the Gym. This was extremely informative and saw the scholars attempting a variety of exercises with the view to them achieving their ‘Barbell License’. 

What was most impressive was how the St Hugh’s scholars rose to the challenge - seeing our Y7 & 8 rugby and hockey players participate in invasive games with Uppingham’s Upper Sixth sports scholars was a real highlight. Prior to this trip, we delivered a session to all Y7 & 8 pupils on cognitive reframing, looking at challenging situations in a different perspective. With pupils being encouraged to view new challenges and environments as opportunities rather than threats. It appears this was a real success and prepared the scholars well.