The Sportshall Decathlon Award is an award that is run by British Athletics.

Sportshall Athletics has five key factors at the heart of the Sportshall concept.

Fair Play – Promotes fair play at all times

Flexibility – Sporthall programmes are designed to be flexible and appropriate in a broad range of facilities.

Potential Talent – Future stars are protected through provision of activity that places the emphasis on team performance rather than the promotion of individuals

Ability – all round ability is encouraged in the view that specialisation at an early age should be avoided.

Our school has been competing in the Schools Sportshall Competitions for quite a number of years now and have, at times won the Regional Competition for Edinburgh.

I knew that British Athletics ran badges for the children in Sportshall so decided that I would do the Decathlon with the children.

The children have to either do a Pentathlon which is 5 events or the one we did this year which was the Decathlon which is ten events. The children gain points for each event and when they have done the whole card with all the events on it, the points are tallied up and they get their overall points which then gives them a badge depending on the points.

Now, the only way we could do this was by the children coming in very early in the mornings so they could do some of the events before school. So I have to give praise for the dedication those children had, to coming in by the back of seven every morning!

I will not name anyone but we had in the end 4 Step 9, 4 Step 10, 11 Bronze, 5 Silver and finally 3 Gold.

Every child gets one of the Athletic badges and a certificate for what they have done.

You were all brilliant and I had a lot of fun doing this with you ! Here is hoping at sometime in the future this can be done again.