Author - Deborah Breacher

Wednesday 15th November saw Great Athletes visit Milwards Primary School for an inspiring event with Commonwealth Games Gold medal-winning gymnast, Steve Frew, who brought energy, enthusiasm, and a wealth of experience to the pupils at Milwards. Fortune and Coates, a local estate agency based in Harlow, proudly sponsored the visit.

The day kicked off with a fun-filled fitness circuit, engaging students from Reception all the way to Year 6. The atmosphere in the school hall was electric as each class took turns tackling the exercises alongside their visiting gymnast, including spotty dogs, mountain climbers, push ups, and star jumps.

The camaraderie among the pupils beaming, each class cheered on the next, clapping and counting down the final seconds to push their peers to give it their all.

The circuit stations were replaced by gym mats, the event transitioning into an awe-inspiring assembly. Steve captivated the entire room, as he shared his sporting story from being a nervous 7-year-old competing in his first gymnastics event to becoming a Commonwealth Games Gold medallist. The pupils’ excitement soared through the assembly hall when Steve showed them a picture of himself as a child proudly holding his first medal, then showed the very same medal to the room.

This memorable event was made possible by the generous sponsorship of Fortune & Coates, The People’s Estate Agency, based in Harlow. The moment Great Athletes made contact with the agency, they enthusiastically jumped at the opportunity to support this event and contribute to the local community.

Beyond their sponsorship, Fortune & Coates made a £100 donation to Milwards Primary School to purchase new sports equipment, in line with Great Athletes’ mission to inspire every child to lead a more active, resilient, and healthy life.

In addition to their financial support, Great Athletes provided and displayed a banner at the school’s main entrance, showcasing Fortune & Coates’ commitment to the community. The school was thrilled not only by the sponsorship but also by the additional gesture of a £500 discount offered by Fortune & Coates to the parents of Milwards Primary School selling their homes.

The day was a resounding success, filled with fitness, inspiration, and community spirit. Milwards Primary School extended a warm thank you to Fortune & Coates for their incredible generosity and to Steve Frew for providing an unforgettable experience that will surely motivate the students for years to come.

If you’d like to learn more about sponsoring a local primary school’s Great Athletes visit, call James on 01223 792205 or email [email protected].

In 2014/15, 100m Sprinter Rion Pierre attended a nursery school with Great Athletes, where he spoke to the children about maintaining a healthy lifestyle and the art of practising to get better. He shared how the more he practised at running, the better he got. Rion then ran a fun fitness circuit with the pupils to show them how fun getting moving can be!

Today, the parent of a pupil who was inspired by Rion’s determination gets in touch with us to share how the Great Athletes visit has stuck with her son, Leo, and spurred him on to become a successful junior runner himself!

On the day of the visit, Leo put his all into the exercises that he practised alongside Rion and his other classmates, and Leo made sure to keep going, even when the exercises began to feel tough. Rion noticed Leo’s hard efforts and rewarded him with his first-ever medal. Leo, now in year 6, still hangs his medal in his room with pride after many years, along with many others that have been added to his collection!

“Leo, you concentrated, listened, and followed the instructions from Rion. You kept exercising even when it became hard work and even practised your running after Rion left! Well done – keep up the good work 😊”

Even from the tender age of 3, Leo has always had a passion for running, Leo’s mum says, with the visit from Rion spiralling this passion into many successful accolades.

Over the years, Leo has channelled his inner resilience and it has certainly paid off. He has won every sports day at his school and represented his school in many competitions with win after win. Finally, in 2022, Leo was able to compete in the under 11’s. His first year came with a big success, where he came 3^rd overall in a total of 5 cross country races in which he was a top 3 finisher in each. This league was the one in which Mo Farrah started!

“He then competed in the National Primary Schools Cross Country competition and came 17th! That’s 17th in the country!” Then, track season approached, and he again smashed each of his races. “He even broke the 600m long-standing record since 2015.”

Leo is now part of the same athletics club in which Rion is part of at Windsor Slough Eaton & Hounslow Athletics Club and is in his first year as an under-13. We all at Great Athletes wish Leo a massive good luck for his upcoming first race at the Thames Valley Athletics Centre for his athletics club open graded meeting, after which he goes on to compete in the Alder Valley Match in April.

“I just wanted to thank you and Rion for inspiring my son even at such a young age. I also thought it was such a coincidence that Rion and my son Leo are actually now in the same athletics club.”

If you’d like to find out more about how you can inspire your children too, call our team on 01223 792200, or visit our online booking page. 

Last week we held our first Great Athletes Conference since 2019. It was great to see so many familiar and new faces in person.

Our theme for this year’s event was storytelling. Each of our athletes has an incredible and inspiring story to tell, and they all tell their stories in different ways, this gave us a great opportunity to share and learn from each other.

In particular, we loved Frederick Afrifa’s catchphrase from his talk ‘Keep moving forward’ a simple, yet powerful phrase that children can easily remember and remind them of the importance of keeping going, even when things get tough.

We also welcomed Greg Davies, the Storyfella to run an interactive storytelling workshop for us.

Some of our top tips for keeping children engaged & telling a great story included:

• Use your voice: Pace, pitch, power, pronunciation and pause
• Body language and movement – use body language to show and move around the stage/room
• Be authentic and have humility

It was a pleasure to be able to hold our annual Great Athletes awards ceremony. Thanks to some lovely feedback from our schools, and votes from colleagues, we gave some of our athletes the following awards;

• Liz Clough was named Sportivater of the year – “Always well prepared; full of energy; totally adaptable!”
• Nerys Pearce was named Athlete of the year –  “Acknowledges every child, and the best storyteller!”
• Sara Roberts was named Office Team member of the year – “outstanding customer service – extraordinary ability build rapport with everyone she speaks to”
• Jess Roper won Best social media activity – “the sheer volume and engagement achieved is outstanding”
• Sean Rose won Best feedback of the year – “Only one word, FANTASTIC”

We are lucky to work with some brilliant athletes and sportivaters who are truly dedicated to helping to inspire children. Their dedication shows in the number of children they have inspired while working with us and we were delighted to give lifetime achievement awards for the number of children inspired to:

• Joe Roebuck for an incredible, 100,000 children inspired
• Belinda Stephen for 50,000 children inspired
• Liz Clough for 50,000 children inspired
• Amy Smith for 50,000 children inspired
• Jack Rutter for 50,000 children inspired
• Peter Bakare for 50,000 children inspired

CONGRATULATIONS to all our athletes and sportivaters!

Everyone went away from the conference with new ideas, knowledge and renewed enthusiasm. We are already looking forward to the Great Athletes conference 2023!

Take a look at some more photos from the conference:

The importance of a good coach to motivate and inspire teams should never be underestimated.

There are legendary examples of how certain individuals have provided such invigorating pre-match pep talks that the team has gone on to win – despite all the odds. San Francisco Giants outfielder Hunter Pence gave an inspirational speech to motivate his baseball team, which was down 2-0. So strong were his words, his boys went on to win their next three games and the World Series.

Pence’s speech consisted of him telling the team to look into each other’s eyes.

He then told them

“I want one more day with you, it’s the most fun, the best team I have ever been on. And no matter what happens we must not give in, we owe it to each other, to play for each other…”

Being able to inspire others with words is a talent. Pence created a sense of unity amongst his teammates.

Here at greatathletesuk we’re delighted to say we have our own in house Hunter – in the form of James Watson. A graduate of Portsmouth University, James has a 1st in Sports Management and Development. His football coaching methods involve plenty of encouraging one-lines which he uses both on and off the field. His pep talks work well for the business world too. Examples of James’ one-liners include:

• “Keep pushing everyone we’re nearly there,”
• “Can we do better than last week?”
• “Added time now just one big burst from everyone and we’ll have this done.”
• “Keep smashing it team”

It all chimes well with Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura’s study of self-efficacy. His research showed that if a person truly believes that they can accomplish a task then they are more likely to do just that.

Tiffanye Vargas, an associate professor of sport psychology at Cal State University, Long Beach, says the content of a leaders’ speech can raise “perceived self-efficacy,” making players feel more energetic, determined, charged and confident.

Further studies she carried out showed that emotional speeches were far more likely to raise self-efficacy than a talk about strategy or an instructional talk (i.e. telling players to drink enough water etc.). Examples of emotional speeches were telling players that the opposition team coach didn’t rate their skills and was telling his players it’d be ‘an easy win’ for them.

Coach Hunter Pence and our own James Watson don’t only have coaching skills, but are adept at leading a team.

Four other leadership skills which are learned in sports coaching:

• Motivating and delegating tasks. Leaders need team building skills to help them positively influence group projects, employee engagement and motivation.
• Strategic Development and Organisational Skills. Coaches must be able to provide a game plan and a strategy to win. Leaders need to always have the endgame in mind and ensure the work is being done efficiently.
• Self-Discipline. Leaders need to work on their own skills and, at the same time, develop new ones – just as players need to continually practice to keep up their sporting prowess.

Great Athletes is a social enterprise that works with top athletes from around the UK and Ireland visiting primary schools to inspire and encourage kids of all abilities, and teachers, to be more active.  Our mission is to Activate, Educate, Motivate and Innovate schools and parents through a series of events and workshops.  If you’d like your school or parents to get active, get in touch with us and see how we could help you inspire our next generation.