Students Enjoying Skiing in Courmayeur
Wider Curricular Success Mansfield Fencing Club Celebrating After Impressive Medals Haul
Mansfield’s ‘TSCA Swords’ fencing club, based at the Samworth Church Academy, have reaped an impressive number of medals at the ‘East Midlands Youth Championships’, the ‘Cocks Moor Wood’ and ‘Leon Paul Epee League’ competitions this year. Returning home with two gold, three silver and two bronze medals amongst many other top ten placings, the group who train weekly in Mansfield are fast becoming a team to be reckoned with. In the recent East Midlands Youth Championships Patryk Sroka won gold in U13 Boys, Amy Walters bronze in U13 Girls, Stanley Alford silver in U17 boys and Liam Deneley won bronze in U15s. Agata Poplawska won gold in U15 Girls and was also selected for ‘East Midlands Region Cadet Winton Cup’ team along with Hannah Boyle and Sam Boyle who are also members of the club. Team member Sam also won silver in the ‘Leon Paul Epee League’ for seniors. Nicola Boyle, chairman of the TSCA Swords, said, “Our junior members are now competing and achieving not just at local level but nationally”. Head coach Miroslaw Poplawski said “We have very many young fencers who come to club and enjoy fencing and it is very pleasing to see them competing successfully at these events. I am also happy to see three of our fencers Sam and Hannah Boyle and Agata Poplawska selected to present the East Midlands Region in the annual ‘Cadet Winton Cup’ in Somerset in December”.
Salem Round Square Conference 2013
The annual ski and snowboarding trip took place 1st – 8th February. We were fortunate to enjoy a variety of excellent snow conditions, despite the occasional white-out with the added bonus of some sunshine here and there. It was such a pleasurable week where memories were made, friendships forged (old and new), new skills mastered and cultural links formed. My thanks and congratulations to everyone who took part in this year’s ski and snowboard trip to Courmayeur, Italy.
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In the very early hours of 14th November 2013 five students (Mat Cooper, Daniel Leader, Beth Scott, Chloe Taplin and Paige Phillips) and myself (Chris Bury), met at the Academy to start our trip to the school of Schule Schloss, Salem on the Swiss – Germany border for a Round Square Conference on Sustainable Mobility. After flying from Birmingham to Munich we hired a car for the 3 hour trip to the School. After a pleasant and uneventful drive down (after deciding to ignore the German that kept appearing on the car’s dash board!!!) we arrived at the picturesque upper school situated on the banks of a lake and surrounded by woodland. We were met by the students from the school and it soon became apparent that the students and not the staff had organised the whole event. Our students were whisked away to be shown their dorms and given a tour of the site, followed by each of the schools doing a brief presentation introducing themselves. The next two days comprised of the students being divided into small groups where they came up with ideas and debated an assigned topic involved with Sustainable Mobility. To help the students with their presentations there were talks given by Mr Becker from the German Government and Mr Moser from Greenpeace. It wasn’t all hard work for the students as there was a trip to the nearby town of Uberligen for them to do a bit of gift shopping, sports activities for them to unwind and a social gathering on the final evening. While the students were busy debating and preparing for their final presentations, the staff from the visiting school where shown around lower and middle schools and were given a history lesson behind the building. The lower school is situated in the grounds of an old castle and the middle school was on an old monastery. We set off back to Munich on the Sunday morning, tired but very happy after a productive and interesting few days. The students had learnt a lot about the Round Square organisation as well as Sustainable Mobility and how we can all help to reduce the damage to the environment.