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:
Leave a Reply