Guest Blog by Kyle Hewitt – Active Schools Aberdeen
Over the past year I have been using Boccia as what I call my ‘gateway sport’. Working with targeted groups with outcomes based on Team work, Confidence and Mental Health. In this time, I have worked with multiple pupils on a one to one or small groups capacity from the schools growing target support department. During the year I have used Boccia to engage the young people initially those whom shy away from mainstream sports and/or those sports and physical activities which feature a higher level of variability and higher level of cognitive load (organised chaos). This can often deter individuals from accessing all that sport and physical activity has to offer, particularly the learning of important and transferable life-skills and the ever more important mental and physical health benefits.
At its basic level Boccia is easy to pick up and play for those who have never played and teachers and staff who have no prior knowledge of the game. It feels welcoming and friendly, it’s not scary or threatening, yet it can be fiercely competitive. It has the ability of developing hand eye coordination, weight of pass, communication, resilience and a sense of achievement when individuals often improve over the course of a single session. It truly is inclusive it can be played with many adaptations and variations and can be played just about anywhere, which has been a great thing particularly this year with so many restrictions impeding P.E. and all of life in general.
Boccia has been a leveller at the academy level with basketball or other sports if you have a few players at even above average in skill sets and some below average it is easier for individuals to get bored and disengage at both ends of the ability scale. I have seen none of this with Boccia: the physically gifted and those less so are closer in this game and yet everyone gets a high level of enjoyment from it and anyone can be successful. (I have lost many times this year to the young people, which they love).
Boccia has also blurred lines between social groups with young people (even a very mixed S4 girls group) who would sit segregated in a class room setting! Around a boccia kit they can laugh and smile (obvious even with masks on), chat and play and get on even if just for 30 minutes. The conversational element around a session of Boccia has also been a fantastic asset in getting to know young people and finding other likes that can be explored, building rapport, trust as well as goal setting in physical activity, sport and the wider curriculum.
Over the year the success of Boccia has been food for thought and we have ordered more kits for those groups so we can play more and develop our skills. We have plans to use it in supporting transitions from P7 to S1 but most excitingly the P.E. department has now ordered their own kits and have discussed the benefits and the potential at engaging more people including those who have struggled to engage in the past and also for Boccia to be used for course work in to National units and even Highers.
Boccia has had so many positives and I can guarantee I am overlooking many of the benefits and positives that this sport has had on our lives this year. This is a general wide account however there are many individual success stories that can be credited to Boccia and we are just getting started. We can have future leaders of boccia developing leadership skills and confidence that may not have been possible without this sport.