St Mary’s Student Offered Work Placement after Volunteering at Sports Competition

A first year Physical & Sport Education (PSE) student at St Mary’s University, Twickenham has been offered a work placement after she volunteered at the West London Panathlon Challenge finals.

Vicky Cockle has been offered the placement by St Philip’s School in Chessington after they were impressed with her dedication at the charity’s multi-sport competition, which sees disabled children from primary and secondary schools across West London take part in a ‘Mini-Paralympics’.

She has been given the chance to help run and plan PE lessons for around three weeks at the special educational needs school for children aged 11-19.

Vicky was one of nine St Mary’s PSE students who helped out at the event, which was hosted by St Mary’s and featured 155 students from 22 schools across seven West London boroughs.

Sutton, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Wandsworth teams competed in the Champions Competition while Ealing, Kingston and Merton competed in the Plate Competition.

The students took part in sports such as Boccia, Table Cricket and adapted Athletics with Sutton and Merton winning their respective competitions to progress through to the overall London final, which takes place at the Copper Box Arena in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in June.

Vicky said, "Through volunteering at the Panathlon event, I was given the opportunity to take what I learned from my course so far, alongside my own values, to explore and practice who I am as a coach. It was a brilliant, valuable experience where I got to meet some awesome kids and have loads of fun and it has resulted in me getting work in a special educational needs school, which is what I want to do in the future.”

Lecturer in Physical Education at St Mary’s Nicola Evans, added, “We are very proud of the support we offer Panathlon, our students enjoy a fantastic day of volunteering and interacting with students from our local schools.”