Six benefits for children participating in team sport

Schools and communities need to create new kinds of sporting facilities and programmes to keep today’s young people engaged

The Department of Health recently published its ‘Childhood obesity: a plan for action’ designed to help reduce childhood obesity through healthier choices.

The report suggests a number of measures, including: introducing a levy on soft drinks, helping businesses make their products healthier through innovation and reducing sugar in products by 20%.

Another recommendation says that every primary school pupil should engage in at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day – 30 minutes delivered in school, with parents and carers responsible for the remaining 30 minutes.

With many children spending their free time in front of a screen and far less on hands-on activity, it is understandable why almost a third of 2 to 15 year old children are classed as overweight or obese.

The new initiative will provide children with regular exercise and contribute to their overall physical health. They will also learn valuable social and teamwork skills.

Below are some of the great benefits participation in team sports can bring to young children:

  • #1 – Builds confidence
    Children have the opportunity to really enjoy an activity that they are good at. They can also practice and exercise their skills, learn their strengths, develop their weaknesses and gain greater self-awareness. It’s a real confidence booster.
  • #2 – Try their best
    When playing a team sport, children gain the experience of winning and losing and how to deal with both emotions. They also learn that things are not going to go their way all of the time, but all that’s important is that they tried their best.
  • #3 – Helps develop relationships
    For many children, making friends can be quite a challenge. By taking part in a team sport, children have many opportunities to practice and develop their social skills and build friendships with their peers and coaches.
  • #4 – Teaches respect
    Through team sport, kids learn the importance of respecting authoritative figures, like their coaches and referees, but also the opposition and their teammates.
  • #5 – Provides a platform to excel
    Getting involved in a sport provides children with the platform to realise their sporting goals and ambitions. Whether they go on to become the next Olympian or just take part for fun, it can stay with them for life.
  • #6 – Develop vital communication skills
    Team sport places children in situations where they need to communicate with their peers and coaches – who may or may not be their friends. This can help them become more sociable in different environments and overcome shyness.

Finding a trusted partner

In order to maximise your budget and deliver high quality sports facilities, you need to engage with a specialist whose team of experts has a proven track record in designing and building sports projects to a diverse range of exacting client specifications.

O’Brien Sports delivers natural sports pitches used for rugby, football and cricket. It also supplies synthetic and Multi Use Games Area pitches, with surfaces suitable for just about every sport and user – from professional sports teams to schools and communities.

Our services

O’Brien Sports offers a full range of sports pitch services, including:

  • Full design and build construction projects
  • Synthetic and multi-use games area (MUGA) pitches
  • Pitch renovations
  • Natural turf sports pitches
  • Total solutions for sports pitches
  • Infrastructure, including access roads and car parks

To discuss how you can create the right sporting environment for young people in your community, contact us: Tel: 01926 319 724 Email: info@obriencontractors.co.uk

O’Brien Contractors receive award for championing sustainable development

Our commitment to the environment has seen us awarded a Green Apple award for sustainable development

We have been recognised for our commitment to sustainability with a coveted Bronze award at the International Green Apple Awards for the Built Environment and Architectural Heritage 2016. This is the second time in 3 years we have received this recognition.

Lining up against some much larger companies, including Kier Construction, Carillion/Morgan Sindall JV and Skanska, the prestigious title was awarded for, “clearly demonstrating a drive towards sustainable development.”

The judges also singled out our management for demonstrating incredible foresight by “choosing to invest and diversify the business during the recession while starting to feel the pinch, resulting in strong financial results during the past six years.”

This enabled us to invest in key areas of the business, including training and apprentices, providing young people with a career path in construction and upskilling current employees by providing them with 3.78 training days on average; and £4.4m in plant and equipment, to push environmental and efficiency savings across projects.

Other areas where we were commended, include our continual investment in management systems audited and validated to ISO14001, ISO9001, OHSAS18001 and Achilles BuildingConfidence (5-star rating) accreditation, which ensures we deliver high standards of quality and compliance in health and safety and the environment.

We achieved this while improving their environmental performance with such measures as:

  • Going paperless and greening our fleet.
  • Sponsoring a wealth of community support initiatives, including: ILEAP, Warwickshire Road Safety, British Blind for Sport, and The Alzheimer’s Society.
  • Investing £220k in GPS technology and developing an earthworks modelling team that prevented 75,000m3 of material from going to landfill.

Peter O’Brien, Managing Director at O’Brien Contractors, said: “This award highlights the benefits we bring to the region and our customers by implementing best practices benchmarked against environmental, quality and health and safety performance. We are thrilled our commitment to sustainable development has been recognised with an award.”