Physical Education

As one of the subjects most severely hit by the pandemic, PE staff and pupils have welcomed the green shoots of revival since the turn of the calendar year. PE lessons have taken various forms since August in response to COVID guidelines, meaning pupils and teachers have had to frequently adapt to new methods of delivery. Online PE lessons, blended PE lessons and practical lessons which comply with social distancing have all featured. Thankfully, we are now beginning to see something like normality, as the range of activities on offer has gradually increased, and we look to the future with positivity and the hope that we can start to use our new facilities to the maximum, and that inter-school fixtures and training sessions will be a huge part of school life once again.

Sherborne has been at the forefront of any developments that have happened in Qatar school sport this year. The U19 boys’ football team marked the 2-year anniversary of the first lockdown with our first fixture since that day, travelling to ACS and drawing an exciting game 4-4. For many of the boys involved it will be their first and last chance to represent the school as Sixth Form pupils, a particularly sad thought but we are also pleased that they had the opportunity to do so, even if just once.

Personal Survival

Moving to the MOQ campus has certainly had its perks; one being access to our own swimming pool. As part of the AS Physical Education course content, pupils have been making use of the facilities whilst being assessed and filmed performing their Personal Survival skills. This has involved a 100m timed swim wearing two layers of clothing, holding a 6-minute huddle position and also using a straddle entry into the water. We look forward to next academic year when we can hopefully get more of our academic PE classes assessed in the pool for both GCSE, AS and A Level courses.

Sherborne Senior School participated in an athletics relay event in May 2022 at the warm-up track at Khalifia Stadium, which hosted the best athletes on the planet for the 2019 World Championships Athletics. The top 8 schools in both the girls and boys races had the chance to qualify for ‘curtain raiser’ at the Diamond League on the following Friday evening.

With little time to prepare and practice our pupils did a fantastic job in coming together as a team, conducting themselves superbly with their positive attitude and commitment.

The girls squad was made up of Sana Ali, Ana Ventorim, Hana Elahi, Jumainah Haq and Hadeel Albagha. Competing in Heat 4, the girls came 15th out of 20 teams overall, missing out on 8th place by only 4 seconds … that’s just 1 second each they that they need to find for next year.

The boys’ squad was made up of Jibran Ahmed, Ali Al Fayyadh, Max Saunders, Max Eite and Daniel Saldanha. The boys also came 15th but out of 22 teams, with only 3 seconds between them and qualifying in 8th place.

It was brilliant to see so many schools involved in an athletics event after 2 years of the event being cancelled for juniors due to COVID-19.

We look forward to getting more pupils out on our training track in school over the next 12 months and returning to participate again next year. Well done all those involved, and special thanks to parents for getting their child to and from the event.

Rugby 7s: Ben Gollings visit

Sherborne Senior School was hugely thankful to Doha RFC for arranging for England Rugby 7s Legend Ben Gollings to visit school in November 2021. Ben is the career leader in points scored on the World Rugby Sevens Series with 2,652 points.

Ben focused his practical sessions on handling, decision making and game-based play. He worked with Year 9 in their PE lesson, before running a session for interested lower school, and then upper school, pupils afterschool. The coaching sessions involved over 50 pupils in total, helping prepare of our pupils for competitive fixtures (see below) and InterHouse.

Ben also delivered a Question-and-Answer session in the auditorium during his visit that was attended by pupils from different Houses. Pupils from our Sherborne Radio station took a lead on asking questions covering such themes as resilience, injury, obstacles and proudest moment.

Since his visit to Sherborne, Ben has become the coach of Fiji sevens team, the two-time Olympic Champions winning gold in both Brazil in 2016 and Japan in 2020.