We are very excited to grant a PE minor award to The Reach Free School for a starter set of Kin-Ball equipment.
If, like us, you didn’t know much about Kin-Ball, here’s an excerpt from kinball.co.uk:
Kin-Ball, is a team sport created in Quebec, Canada in 1986 by Mario Demers, a physical education professor, in which the main distinctive characteristics are the big size of the ball (1.22 meters in diameter) and that the matches are played among three teams at the same time instead of traditional one-vs-one like the most of the team games. The International Kin-Ball Federation counts 3.8 million participants, primarily from Canada, the U.S., Japan, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Malaysia, China. The newest country is the UK. Kin-Ball UK formed in 2018
We have happily supported a number of emerging sports being introduced into schools recently as we think the novelty, variety and fun they provide can engage all abilities and ages. As Katie Townsend, Deputy Head of PE, explained in her application:
“We intend on using this equipment with our disengaged pupils in order to provide them with alternative sports to the traditional sports we currently offer at school. We will use the Kin ball equipment during core PE lessons with KS3-5 and offer this an extra-curricular activity after school for all year groups. We intend to use Kin ball as one our 'House Games' competitions within our House system to promote teamwork, communication and pupil leadership. We will also use the equipment with our Cambridge National GCSE group to demonstrate and introduce the idea of emerging sports.”
We are always impressed when a new activity, subject or learning method is also planned to be disseminated to pupils outside of the bidding school. The Reach Free School are aiming to do just that with this exciting new sport:
“If we had the equipment, we would be the Hub school within our School Sports Partnership that would promote Kin Ball events and competitions against other schools. We have a Family of 7 local primary schools within our Partnership that we could also host sporting events for. This would have a wider impact on the local community and promote an emerging sport.”