ASH Athletes Compete In & Win First Virtual Sports Festival Title

In last week’s edition of the FLASH, we showcased how our ASH athletes were tracking in the first ever LSSA virtual sports festival. At the time, the ASH Trojans were second on the leaderboard. We’ll let Mr. Ducharme, grade five P.E. teacher and coach - who was instrumental in getting ASH involved in this tournament - tell you all about the exciting results!

Between May 4 and 8, all P.E. classes and athletic teams had the opportunity to compete in a Virtual Sports Festival against 12 other international schools, most from the London area, but some as far away as Bangkok, Thailand, Basel, Switzerland and Waterloo, Belgium.

This opportunity was offered to us from a friend and former colleague of mine in Thailand, now teaching at American School in London, as well as my former principal from Thailand who is now the principal at the International School in Basel (one of the participating schools). We polled all P.E. teachers and the ASH Athletics office to see if they’d be interested in giving this a go and with huge enthusiasm, everyone was on board, including our ASH administration.

The contest had 41 events, 12 schools, 5609 videos or photos submitted to organizers, 25,353 total points awarded in the festival, 238 students and teachers made it to the wall of fame, 87 of those were from ASH, including:

*Carter B. was the highest scorer of the event with 22 entries. 
Top 5th graders - Annie, Marisa, Beatriz and Sage (9)
Top 6th graders  -Evi, Fleur, Katherine, Matilda, Paige, Rozalia, Vilhelm, Roza, Vega (7)
Top 7th graders - Tiago (12), Iris (11)
Top 8th graders - Carter (22), Sana (10)
Top 9th grader -  Carter (11)
Top 10th grader - Arthur (7)
Top 11th grader - Jessica (6)
Top Teacher- Ms. Bishop (13)

ASH got off to a great start on Monday, jumping out of the gates to take a convincing lead, but ISB Bangkok was on holiday, so their kids were not motivated to begin yet. Then on Tuesday, ASH was on holiday, so our number of entries dwindled somewhat, and we saw ourselves give up the lead to the super engaged Panthers of Bangkok. On Thursday, ASH had the best day of the week, surpassing Bangkok entries and got us back within a shot at the leader. Trailing by approximately 900 points going into Friday, it then looked like too large of a lead to overcome. BUT... the Trojans rallied with hard work, enthusiasm, grit, determination and continued their efforts right up till midnight. Grades 9 and 10 had saved their entries for the end of the week, our Middle and High School track teams produced two huge 100 km/100 point entries, 5th grader Durham L. threw in a 69 pt. banana relay video and finally, many of our younger Trojans had set personal goals of getting on the wall of fame. All of these factors contributed to an amazing final day.

Organizers needed the weekend to tally points, watch thousands of videos and develop an amazing closing ceremony memory. Waking up Monday morning, the Trojans learned the news that their efforts were enough and that they had made up enough ground to surpass Bangkok, winning by 207 points. And were crowned Bell of the Ball.

Thanks needs to be given in many directions for the success in this event. The students were inspired, engaged, filled with pride and carried out just enough to get over the line. It was you who did the work guys! Parents, who supported and joined their children with the creation of such wonderful videos. Well done! My fellow P.E. teachers, who wonderfully inspired their students to engage, compete for their school and to fight to the end, you are all awesome! Thank you Ms. de Randamie, Mr. Frew, Ms. Harman, Ms. Bishop and Ms. Wood. Classroom teachers around the school who jumped in on the fun and helped score points for the school - those efforts did make a difference! Athletic teams, directors and coaches, thank you for also getting our extra curricular athletes involved in their virtual programs. Administration, thank you for supporting us to enter this event and for cheering us on all week long.

This event brought a nice change in our virtual learning in physical education, it allowed us to get off our computers, to interact with our parents and siblings in a fun way, it connected us with other international schools and learning communities and it gave us a sense of school pride as we finished atop of the heap. Ms. Bishop said early in the week that this would be a marathon and not a sprint. She was 100% correct… Well done Trojans!!! 

ASH community, you did it! Way to go! Go Trojans!

#ASHexperience #thejourneymatters