What will the Virus do to the Future of Saturday Sport in Schools?

Amongst the many things which are uncertain about how schools will operate when pupils return, there is general agreement on one thing: inter-school sport will be one of the last things to resume. 

Currently forbidden by National Governing Bodies, as well as travel and distancing restrictions, there is little chance that it will be restored to its previous forms as soon as these conditions  are removed.  There will be nervousness amongst both schools and parents about close interaction outside the closed environment of a school.  This will be particularly the case amongst boarding communities, where the consequences of the virus being introduced by a visiting player would be disastrous.  It’s not just the game.  Everything about the concept is fraught with difficulty: travel, changing, equipment, socialising, teas, parents in school. 

This presents a problem for schools who have always had a buoyant competitive programme on Saturdays.  Day schools will be reluctant to let their pupils and parents get out of the habit of arranging their weekend around school commitments, and promoting the match as the high point of the week.  Boarding schools will have no choice.  They will have to fill the void of Saturday afternoons, which have been devoted to sport for more than 100 years.   Observers with long memories will be conscious of the impact of the break in weekend sport caused by the teachers’ dispute of the 1980s: it simply killed the concept forever in many maintained schools.

There will be a need to offer an alternative programme on Saturdays, partly to maintain the expectation, and also to justify fees.  What this might look like, and the level of engagement it will attract, are unknowns.  Equally significant will be the target audience.  Will it just be aimed at those games-facing pupils who would be taking part in school sport in a parallel universe?  Or will this be a chance to seek a wider level of engagement that is not ability-dependent?  Will it follow the traditional seasons as much as is allowed, or will the activities wholly different ?  Will it be every Saturday in day schools?  Will parents be allowed on site to watch?   There are a lot of questions to consider.

One thing is certain.  Whether, what and how there is weekend physical activity in the autumn term (and possibly beyond) will have a legacy for following years.  Possibly forever. In schools where the culture is weak, and commitment was already variable, there is the real chance that it will disappear.  Even those where expectations are high, and pupils keen, will be challenged to maintain enthusiasm if a whole year of competition is missed.

The future of traditional games fixtures is threatened, at least in the quantity  of the recent past.  If an attractive alternative programme is established next term, it would be difficult to abolish it later.  It is hard to see the low-quality, low-ability games teams restored if their constituent conscripts have been shown a more engaging alternative.  The floundering economy may mean that schools shrink and those teams, previously marginal, become unviable anyway. 

The keenest, athletic pupils will be desperate to return to teams and matches, whatever might have happened during the crisis.  But the model of a single sport per term may have been broken forever.

Whatever schools choose to do about Saturday sport next term should be carefully considered.  The medium term impacts and unintended consequences should be thoughtfully audited, and a clear picture be established of how it will look post-pandemic.

It’s not just the pupils whose attitudes may change if there is a protracted period of no weekend competition.  Those classroom teachers who have assisted with Saturday teams, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, may be reluctant to restore their involvement once they establish the habit of a match-free weekend.  Bursars will certainly be excited about the cost reductions in travel and catering. 

The sum of these factors makes it inevitable that the post-virus world of school sport will be different.  Schools have a choice: they can wait anxiously for the crisis to end and then try to put the inevitable emergency measures back into the bottle.  To desperately re-discover what they had before.  Or they can accept the changing world, and use the time to maintain a culture of enthusiasm, and experiment with how the future programme may incorporate what was best of the past, but improve the rest.