Sports Reports: REVIEW – Esme Peters
Disclaimer – I don’t dislike sports reports or really sporty people
Every Monday the whole school hears a series reports and witnesses the handing out of certificates and awards. We dutifully sit, listen (hopefully), clap and generally be silent, before the weekly prefect address sends us off into the week with a renewed sense of purpose and perspective.
Of course everyone’s idea of success is different, but most would agree that we should celebrate these successes in some form or other as a whole school, but is sport still over-egged – or, perhaps more importantly, are the reports themselves just too generic? My personal opinion is that we should mark sporting success in some way, but we should be more innovative in how we do this. Most reports could be effectively conveyed in a series of generic remarks: ‘Morning school, NAME OF SPORT / SERIES OF TEAMS / SCORELINES AND SCORERS WITH MENTION OF NOTABLE PERFORMANCE / PAD OUT WITH SOME SPORTING JARGON / CONCLUSION – e.g. LOST BUT PLAYED WELL, OR OTHER PITHY SUMMATION.
I believe these reports should be shorter, still giving recognition to the players and keep the school updated on what’s going on, and much more innovative.
How about each sports reports take the form of a particular type of poem? For example: Sonnets for victories, ballads for draws, elegies for defeats, limericks for exceptional results. I have even mocked up one of the latter as a little taster:
‘Who’d heard of the 13C’s
Before they brought Fram to their knees?
They had trailed 5-4
But then scored six more
With a hat trick for J Hum-phreys.’
One of the reasons I enjoy prefect thought for the week so much is it allows the school to hear something (hopefully) new and (usually) inspiring. These are time slots in assembly that spur us all on to go and achieve and be successful (in our own way). I am not saying I do not enjoy sports reports; I often find them very informative. However, and Sophie (sat across from me and actually in teams) agrees with me, sports reports should be shorter, more entertaining, and more engaging to those without an obvious stake in the actual team – not a blow-by-blow account littered with platitudes.
Helena (sat next to me, does weird sports like karate) also makes the point the problem with a minute by minute account of matches is those are deeply invested and care about such detail are probably those who are likely to know this information already. Therefore her idea is that we should:
- Announce the score
2. Who played really well
3. The match highlight – preferably something amusing
Therefore sports reports could be significantly shorter and hopefully more interesting to those who frankly don’t give a monkeys if you had to take a two hour bus journey to go and play cricket but it rained.
I think everyone who speaks in assembly deserves great credit as it takes a lot of courage and a lot of preparation. I also recognise that much has been done to make assemblies more varied and interesting in recent times. However, I think that the content sports captains deliver should, as far as possible, be original and engaging, not hackneyed and repetitive.
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