GSA Girls Go Gold! – Report by Eve and Emily (Sports Captains, Year 13)

On Thursday 19 September, 9 members of our senior school community were lucky enough to be invited to the annual GSA Girls Go Gold conference at Sherborne Girls School which aims to increase female participation in sport through new opportunities. Students who attended form part of our Sports Scholarship programme, Talented Athletes Programme, or study A Level PE.  

We all had the chance to listen to female role models talk about their experiences in sport, and how they got to the respective performance level they are or were at, as well as learning from elite female athletes in sport-specific masterclasses across the course of the day.

Our keynote speaker – Clare Balding CBE – spoke about how having grown up in the racehorse community, her career in sport began as an amateur jockey, and how she has since paved the way for more female presenters to be involved in the sporting world.   

She explained her history of competitive school sport at her GSA School in Newbury and how her involvements that stemmed through her family at an early age have developed throughout her life, leading to her career in sports presenting at global events such as the Olympic Games and Wimbledon, to name but a few. 

A few of us undertook a masterclass by Eboni Usoro-Brown, an England netball player, who was a member of the Gold Medal winning team at the Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast in 2018. She taught us lots of defensive skills and tactics to be used in a game situation that she, herself, had learnt at England netball camps at Loughborough University. 

After lunch, some of us were taught several types of cricket sweeps by Laura Harper, a former U21 England cricketer, who emphasised the importance of technology in sport by incorporating ball feeders to teach us how to clear the ball to score more runs. Others attended an inspirational coaching session with Grace Balsdon OLY, field hockey player and Tokyo 2020 medallist, and Laura Sugar MBE, former Senior Wales Hockey U20 captain and Rio 2016 Paralympian. 

Our last talk of the day was led by Sue Anstiss MBE, an entrepreneur, and an advocate for women in sport. She talked about the rise in women’s sport and how “there is no better time to be a woman in sport than now.” She highlighted how women do not only have to be playing at an elite level to promote women in sport, but can also be part of the sporting industry whether that is at grassroots level or in front of a camera in the media. 

Throughout the day, each of the 25 schools in attendance had the chance to compete in a netball shooting competition to win a Masterclass with a London Pulse NSL Coach. Very excitingly, Emily, Isla and Georgie managed to win the competition scoring 57 points in 60 seconds. We cannot wait for our coaching session later this year.  

Thank you so much to Sherborne Girls School for hosting such a fabulous and inspiring event. We all thoroughly enjoyed it and feel truly fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend.