'Schools should have twirly, girly, fitness for girls' (?!!!?!!)

[Berts]

As in, on the news this morning, 'Schools are being encouraged to introduce Zumba, or dance, to encourage girls to participate'.

So depressing. I was not a sporty kid, always last to be picked for any team and no hand-eye coordination at all. I only discovered competitive sports at the age of 30, and it's been brilliant! I love it! I love competing and being super-fit!

I wish I'd realised I loved competitive sport years ago, so what went wrong at school?

I suspect it's a combination of (a) sports teachers who are only interested in naturally sporty, talented kids and don't take time to help the weedy less apt to get better; (b) lack of choice (netball all winter, rounders all summer, er, that was it); and (c) girls feeling it's not okay to be sweaty and knackered after a good training session.

Any thoughts?

I've never understood why schools don't offer cycling as a sport. Grass tracking is a great way to get into competitive cycling and can be done anywhere with a playing field. Women's cycling, especially track cycling, is huge at the moment and I can't think of any better role models than Vic Pendleton, Jess Varnish, Laura Trott etc.

And of course it would mean that the kids would have to cycle to school to take part - double win!

malinois probably a lot to do with the cost of the equipment. Buying (and maintaining) enough bikes suitable for a class of varied sized children to use would be pretty expensive I would think. And a state school couldn't reasonably offer a class that only those well off enough to afford a bike could participate in.

Such I sort of assumed that every child would have a bike of some sort. Possibly a naive assumption.

I interviewed Robin Cousins a few months back. He was very keen to say kids ought to be able to try as many different sports as possible to find something they enjoy. He almost convinced me sport might be OK - and I hated PE lessons. The only thing I was good at, gymnastics, wasn't available at high school - it was all ruddy athletics/tennis/hockey/netball. I was short-sighted with no hand-eye co-ordination so hopeless at all team games and ball games. PE teachers were all sadists who never showed you how to do anything - the first time they put hurdles up, Miss Bitchfromhell just ordered us to run, didn't bother explaining how the hell you were supposed to jump over them. It has taken me more than 20 years to remember that I didn't always hate sport - wasn't until ds started gym lessons that a lightbulb suddenly dawned and I remembered 'I used to be good at this'.