Our aim

We are passionate about sport and physical well-being. All students in the Sixth Form have around three hours of timetabled games lessons per week (no PE), making use of our sports hall (one of the largest in the region), sports studio, fitness suite and outdoor all weather and grass pitches. Most of our training and matches take place on our pitches at the Upper, but we also draw on 26 acres of pitches 15 minutes away from school, at Little Abington.

Our core sports are cricket (girls and boys), hockey (girls and boys), netball, rugby and tennis (girls and boys), and these are an important aspect of our games programme, both within timetabled curriculum time and outside it. Take a look the sport pages in our beyond the curriculum section for full details of our games programme.

The facts

Games

Setting
The core sports are grouped by ability; options are in mixed ability and mixed gender groups

Qualification
Students may choose to make an aspect of sport the focus of their Rouse Research Award or EPQ

Notable alumni

John Steele (1982) followed his career as a professional rugby player with posts as CEO of the RFU and UK Sport, and Chief Executive of the Youth Sport Trust

Curiosity Corner

Five Lower Sixth pupils applied their science knowledge and skills in an attempt to discover winning tactics for tennis. The team used theoretical studies as well as a series of experiments to find out how specific tennis racquet features, along with environmental conditions and court surfaces, influence a tennis ball in motion.

They studied the effect of:

shock absorbers on ball speed and sound
raquet mass on power
string tension on raquet power
environmental temperature on tennis ball bounce
court surface on ball speed, spin and ball bounce.

Both the theoretical predictions and the experimental results confirmed that lowering string tension does indeed increase the power of the racquet, and that tennis balls bounce higher in hot weather. Players may wish to pick their court surface carefully:

Grass is a high speed, less-responsive surface. It favours offensive players and the use of backspin shots, (e.g. slice).
Hard is a high-speed, more-responsive surface. It favours offensive players and the use of topspin.
Clay is a low-speed, more-responsive surface that enhances ball spin. It favours defensive players and the use of topspin.
Artificial grass is a medium-speed, medium-responsive surface. It does not favour a certain style of play and thus can be recommended as a standard surface, perhaps for new tennis players.

For their full report, visit the Perse Studio blog which showcases student work.

Learning journey

Sixth form students have access to an extensive list of options, which range from team to individual and from competitive to recreational. Options include badminton, touch rugby and a range of fitness classes – all designed to give students the opportunity to try something new.

Students can also select sport coaching options during their timetabled enrichment sessions.

Girls

Term	Sport
Michaelmas	Hockey
Lent	Netball
Summer	Tennis, cricket or options

Boys

Term	Sport
Michaelmas	Rugby
Lent	Hockey
Summer	Tennis, cricket or options

Providing stretch

Students can train independently in our fitness suite, using a programme put together for them by our conditioning coach. The coach also runs a weekly fitness masterclass: sessions include boxing, core, internals and spin.

Beyond the classroom

We field around 160 ‘A’ to ‘F’ teams each year and play on average 450 matches per term. Important sporting values such as sportsmanship, codes of conduct, respect for officials, discipline, reliance, leadership, teamwork, winning, losing and simply having fun are all fostered within the framework of the programmes offered. Please see the sport pages in our beyond the curriculum section for full details, and see how our teams are doing in our fixtures and results section.

In addition to competitive sport between schools, there is a considerable amount of competition within the School. We run an indoor cricket league, where staff and students compete against each other, there are House tournaments and sixth form students have end of term girls v boys friendlies.

Sports clubs on offer at lunchtime and after school include circuit training, fitness, equestrian and football.