What is your Endgame?

When thinking about this first blog we wanted to link it to something current, tangible and, as luck would have it, so comes along one of the biggest popular culture events of the last 10 years. Marvel (comics) have just released a film which ties together 10 years of storytelling, marking the end of the most successful film franchise in modern cinema. However, despite Avengers: Endgame being an ending it is also a beginning for a new line of storytelling to come.

Now what on earth has this got to do with school sport or sports science provision within a school? The film got me thinking about our pupils and the goals and aspirations they have within sports and academics. These individual stories are rich with success, failure, and all the emotions under the sun, which we are privileged to be privy to when we get to be a small part of their journey. Some will aspire to the elite level sport when they leave Millfield, and some will achieve this, however the majority will transition to university or the workplace not ever making the echelons of elite sport. In either context making the transition from school to adult life is full of challenges, success and failures that all should be embraced as part of the journey.

In our school gyms we have the phrase ‘The journey never stops’. There are many connotations to this phrase and like the film it implies that the story is ever evolving but is also punctuated with transitions from one chapter to another. This is how our support/ sports science team see a pupil’s time at Millfield. Engaged with our athletic development, Physiotherapy and performance analysis programmes, individual chapters in the pupil’s story evolve, allowing them to transition to their next challenge within sport or life in general. This maybe providing them with the movement competency and education around athletic development, it may be providing them with the tools to allow them to overcome an injury, or understand their own performances empowering them to achieve great things within their sport. The value of these types of experiences are seen not only in the context of a pupil’s sport, but once they have transitioned into adult life.

A major example of this is the athletic development department’s ‘what it takes to transition’ framework. Over the last 2-3 years the team has sought out the key features of physical skill and performance, across multiple sports, in multiple settings, which our pupils will transition to when leaving Millfield. So rather than looking at the elite pupils only, we appreciate most of our pupils will move on to programmes which will continue their development and engagement with sport, but not be at the elite level. This makes the Endgame for our pupils to be objective and tangible, whilst avoiding poor practice when only focusing on getting pupils bigger, stronger, faster and serving to inflate the ego of the coach with fancy short-term success.

Some schools and clubs may not subscribe to this idea. The end goal for these programmes may be to focus on results as a means of demonstrating development of individuals, with the perception of success off the back of winning. The inference being that the pinnacle of the pupils sporting career is being part of a winning school side. The reality of the Endgame is in fact a very different proposition, as we have suggested. This is not the Millfield way, and it is especially the counter to our philosophy within Millfield Pupil Support Service. The goal for us is to be traditionally different and provide an environment that is learner centered and development focused to realises the potential within each pupil we see.

The journey never stops, it is punctuated with transitions and chapters which we, as practitioners must prepare our pupils for to the best of our ability. Success is not based on results, times and weight, but a process of development which culminates in that individual achieving their own potential at whatever level of sport, career or journey they wish to follow. It is not about the few but all those we have the privilege to briefly join on their journey towards their Endgame.