Lichfield City Cycles Go-Ride Back To School

 

News Posted  22nd October 2008

 

Lichfield City Cycle Club gained their Go-Ride Clubmark award back in March 2008 because the club’s members have been working hard to develop the club. Development of the club has meant the training of new volunteers to help run training sessions and events, recruitment of new riders and establishing links with both British Cycling and the local community. Therefore, it is no wonder that the Schools in Lichfield have been so receptive to the events that have been delivered in the City.

 

Go-Ride Coach Louise Day worked with the Lichfield City Cycles CC to organise several events which have taken place over the last 6 months. The club and Louise planned a co-ordinated series of actions that began with the first event held in May. The first action was to stimulate interest in cycling among young people in local schools with a Go-Ride PESSCL (Physical Education School Sport Club Links) scheme. The ultimate aim of the PESSCL programme is to link Schools with Go-Ride Clubs such as Lichfield City CC. These activities were run over a four week period and 1 day a week was spent in each school. The participating Secondary School was Friary Grange and the Primary School was Christ Church CE. The 4 week course was very successful because many young people were interested in doing more cycling activities and others really enjoyed Louise’s coaching, and so stage 2 of the action plan was able to be initiated.

 

Every training session ends in a race but to give the young people a real taste of competitive cycling Louise and the Lichfield City Cycles representative Phil Kelly, organised an inter school Competition between 3 local Primaries. The primaries were invited to attend the Friary Grange Secondary school site to compete in the first ever competition of its kind in the area. Louise has delivered PESSCL sessions in each of the schools invited to the competition day resulting in there being a high level of skill on display. The schools that attended were Scotch Orchid, St Chads and Charnwood, Christ Church CE was unable to attend that particular day of competition.

 

Each school selected 2 girls and 2 boys from years 3, 4, 5 and 6 to take part in the event.  The day started with a mass warm up in the sports hall, conducted by a qualified instructor from the Friary Sports centre.

 

There were 4 types of competition available during the day for the young racers to choose from;

 

                   Time Trial - an individual race against the clock

                   Cyclo-Cross - 3 laps of a short circuit round the Friary fields

                   Skills relay - slalom, bottle pick up and limbo

                   Roller Races -  this is a 500m sprint on a cycle held indoors

 

The last race of the competition was the Roller races. All the riders gathered around them to cheer on their team mates as the winners of the inter school competition was decided.

Plaques were awarded to the winning school in each year and an overall plaque for the winning school to keep for a year. The winning school for 2008 was St Chads and they will return next year when all the participating pupils will be able to participate in a rematch and the champions will try to defend their title.

 

Louise Day and Phil Kelly proud as they were of the success of Stage 1 and 2 didn’t let their action plan stop there. Up next was a week long activity programme during the school holidays during the summer. For the whole of the PESSCL and Inter School Competition days the activity programme and Lichfield City Cycles were being promoted. This prompted 30 young people to attend the activity programme which is a huge success for the West Midlands team because they have managed to sustain the young peoples’ initial interest in cycling. What was in store for the 30 attendees was a week of off road skills and racing. The activity programme took place at the Friary Grange Leisure centre, thus providing a convenient local area for the families involved that didn’t require them to travel great distances to participate.

 

The Go-Ride programme is designed for young people up to the age of 16 and the partnership created between British Cycling’s Go-Ride Coach and Lichfield City Cycles’ applied their development plan to secondary schools. Another inter school competition was held at Friary Grange leisure centre, but this time years 7, 8 and 9 participated. The participating schools were The Friary School and Nether Stowe School Lichfield, and Cardinal Griffin School from Cannock.

 

There were 3 types of competition within the event, each of them a discipline from cycling. They were;

 

                    Time Trial

                    Mountain Bike race

                    Roller races

 

Each school was asked to send 12 children, 4 from each age group (2 x boys and 2 x girls). All competitors did each event. Each participant raced in every event but the boys and girls were separated. The boys and girls simultaneously raced in alternate events before all the competitors gathered in the sports hall to decide the overall winner in the Roller Races. The schools competed for an overall boy’s team trophy and a girl’s team trophy. They also competed for an overall schools trophy.

 

In the Mountain Bike race for boys the event was won by Jacob Kelly from Cardinal Griffin School, with Netherstowe School awarded 2nd and the Friary 3rd place. In the Girls event Emily Nelson from Netherstowe School was 1st with Friary in 2nd and Cardinal Griffin 3rd. The Time Trial for the boys was also won by Kelly, Netherstowe were again awarded 2nd and Friary were 3rd. In the girls’ race Nelson won again for Nether Stowe, Griffin was 2nd and Friary 3rd.

 

Moving indoors for the roller racing, the intensity of the racing and the spectacle of the event itself created a buzz of excitement as riders raced over a 500m sprint effort. The Roller Racing was a unique spectacle because all the racers were exerting maximum effort in front of each other and yet they were remaining still on their static rollers. However, despite the uniqueness of the event Jacob Kelly’s and Emily Nelson’s strength told again as they took the honours once again. Posting times of 27.77 and 29.13 seconds respectively for the 500 metres.

 

The boys category was won by Cardinal Griffin and Nether Stowe took the Girl's trophy. The Overall Schools Trophy was won by just 5 points by Nether Stowe School, with Cardinal Griffin in 2nd 

and Friary Grange finishing 3rd.

 

Phil Kelly, manager of Friary Grange Leisure centre and organiser of the event said “It was a superb afternoon and was clearly an enjoyable event; we hope to extend the event next year to include more schools”

 

Phil Kelly also expressed his gratitude to the volunteers from Lichfield City Cycling Club who helped on the day and Wolverhampton Wheelers who loaned bikes for the roller racing event. The event would not have been possible at all without the support and assistance given by British Cycling. Particular thanks go to Louise Day and Chris Yates, the West Midlands Go-Ride coaches, who supplied invaluable expertise on the day, bikes and the helmets used during the outdoor events.

 

Lichfield City Cycles achieved Go-Ride Clubmark Status in March 2008 and the links created with the British Go-Ride Team and other local clubs such as Wolverhampton Wheelers are strong and bearing fruit. One of the reasons Lichfield utilised these links was because they wanted to attract many more young members and young volunteers. Phil Kelly reports that this has been a great success with more and more new Lichfield members making their presence felt at the local Cyclo-Cross League.

 

One of the challenges that attracting large numbers of new members brings is the need for new volunteers. But gladly, along with the new young people coming to the club, there are more parents who are getting involved which is making it easier for coaches such as Michael Davies and Nigel Capewell deliver Lichfield City Cycles’ coaching activities.

 

Louise Day

Go-Ride Coach – West Midlands