On Monday 12 September, twelve students (Upper School Sports Scholars and Academic PE students) joined around four hundred other students at the GSA Girls Go Gold Conference at Wycombe Abbey School.

This excellent event offered the students both physical and mental challenges to support the work of The Abbey Sports Scholar programme, enabling them to develop in their respective performance pathways and sporting disciplines.

The event started with a keynote speech from Sue Anstiss MBE, the CEO of Fearless Women and host of the award winning Game Changers podcast. She explored the reasons for the exclusion of women from the world of sport throughout centuries and why we are now witnessing positive change as never before.

Greg Whyte, the renowned Sports Scientist and former Olympian, was the second keynote speaker. Initially, he spoke about the different physical challenges that girls experience in sport, before entertaining the crowd with stories of his involvement in training celebrities for the Sport Relief charity.

In the afternoon the girls had the opportunity to undertake sports activities. These were netball (with Mikki Austin, player-coach and Director of Netball at Surrey Storm), cricket (with Bucks Cricket) and Rugby (with Rocky Clarke, ex England Captain). Other sessions were sports lifestyle skills (with Olympian Sarah Collin, from the University of Surrey) and sports media (with Alex Aljoe, presenter for Premier League Productions). Alongside this, fitness was put to the test with some practicals with Bucks New University.

The event was concluded with a question and answer session, involving all of the keynote speakers and practical session leaders, enabling the students to substantiate the day’s activities.

Mr Stuart-Thompson