LEH parents - a question about the sport.

[SouthLondonParent]

Ok, the school says that sport is very "inclusive" for all girls who wish to participate, but I wanted to hear from current parents in the Senior School as to whether this is in fact the case. My dd loves her sport, but I am not sure she is A team material. I would hate for her not be be encouraged to participate in competitive sports and not get the opportunity to take part in fixtures. How many teams do each of the year groups have and do they all get matches? Please could you give me your honest thoughts and experiences on the matter. Many thanks!

Sport at LEH is very exclusive. It isn't so much whether they have A,B and C teams, if they have the enthusiastic participants they will start them and get fixtures,even in the minority niche sports like fencing and skiing. However the girls who play sport are often attracted to LEH by the chance to play at National level and can be an intimidating competitive lot and cliquey. It is more a case of girls being discouraged and put off trying to join in because it is taken so seriously by others.

Thanks for the reply. So, do the girls that are not at "national" level get completely turned off sport?

It is more that they tend to form the nucleus of a clique. I am sure if your daughter is A/B team material and takes her sport seriously she will have a good time but if she is easily discouraged or less sporty and just wants to do it for pleasure /exercise then it will be off putting. For such a sporty school it is a relative minority who actually do the team sports, as I say they will put together teams for all who want to take part and organise fixtures but the focus of the PE and Rowing Depts is on national success (in fact you cannot take rowing anything but seriously, 19 hours by Year 2) . Both my DDs would have done more sport if they had been encouraged, they had done extra curricular netball etc at primary, but their experience was the opposite. Having said that they have interform competitions and since both my DDs were in non sporty forms they got to have fun doing those. However my older DD who takes nothing seriously did tell me of the blank incomprehension and even hostility when she cracked a joke in an interform match!!