Coventry City players push pupils into premier league

2nd November 2007

Coventry City FC and Coventry West Sports Partnership have come together to encourage over 50 city primary schools and over 10,000 children to be more active.

As a reward for good performance, one lucky school was paid a visit by Goalkeeper Dimitrios Konstantopoulos and Midfielder Jay Tabb. Both joined in with lessons and talked about the benefits of exercise.

Coventry City produced boards with football shirts numbered 1-12 for all classrooms in the partnership to record how many minutes of activity they undertook in a week. Each shirt represented ten minutes of exercise. When a class was physically active, a counter moved around the shirts to log the minutes completed. Figures were then collected by School Sport Co-ordinators and classes who were consistently active won a visit from two Coventry City FC players.

Two hours of physical education and school sport each week by youngsters is the current government target. Coventry West Sports Partnership has been assisting schools to meet this level under the management of Jon Doherty since its formation in 2005. It is anticipated that with the help of Coventry City FC, pupils in schools will become even more active.

Jon Doherty, PDM Woodlands Coventry West Coventry Sports Partnership said:

“I believe this is the first type of partnership with a local football club which will really boost the motivation in our schools to take part in regular exercise throughout the school day and impact on pupils’ learning.”