Badgerbrook Primary School’s reputation for sporting excellence has resulted in visits from a range of sporting VIPs.  Following one of our many tag rugby successes, Leicester Tigers, England and British Lions, Harry Ellis and Tim Stimpson came to deliver a masterclass to Year 5 classes in front of the Sky Sports cameras, which was televised on ‘The Rugby Club’.

In the run up to London 2012, world junior triple jump silver medallist, Laura Samuels gave a presentation to the whole school about her career, combined with a triple jump demonstration and a question and answer session.
After London 2012, we received a visit from six time paralympian, Jane Stidever, and her mother Jill, who coached the swimming team at several paralympic games. Jane had won sixteen Olympic medals, five of them gold, and achieved the remarkable feat of winning gold in both swimming and equestrian at the same games. Jane and Jill reminisced about their experiences and gave the children an opportunity to examine some of Jane’s medals.

Multi British pole vault champion, Kate Dennison, also came to visit, to share her experiences of Beijing 2008 and London 2012, and lead a training session with our athletics team.

A proud day was undoubtedly the visit of Britain’s greatest Olympian, Sir Steve Redgrave. Sir Steve was travelling the country on behalf of Matalan, promoting the new TOPS games programme, which is designed to help primary school teachers deliver the P.E. curriculum more effectively. Badgerbrook was privileged to be chosen for his visit after Mr Williams had trained teachers from over 50 schools in Leicestershire in how to use the TOPS initiative. After showing inspirational videos of Sir Steve’s Olympic performances, he spoke at length to our pupils about his career, before joining in with our Year 6 children in a TOPS games session, in front of various local press agencies and the East Midlands Today cameras. Sir Steve then stayed on afterwards for a significant time to sign autographs and for photographs with children and families. What a truly memorable day and what a truly great man!

Furthermore, on a very special day in May 2013, our Year 3 tag rugby team were invited by Leicester Tigers to represent them in a tag rugby demonstration match at Twickenham, during the half time break in the Aviva Premiership Final between the Tigers and Northampton Saints. What an experience, playing in front of 80,000 people!