Celebrating Sporting Success

The annual Pipers Corner Sports Awards Presentation Evening took place on Monday night and we were hugely privileged to welcome Team GB Hockey Goal Keeper and Rio Olympics Gold medallist, Maddie Hinch, to present the girls with their awards.

It has been a very busy and exciting sporting year at Pipers with nearly 500 sporting fixtures and events completed by 70 teams in over 16 different sports! The awards presented during the evening included Full and Half Colours, Coach’s Players of the Year, and Most Improved Players for each sport. There were also be a variety of other team and individual awards such as the District Netball Tournament winners and an award for the Team of the Year.

Sport at Pipers continues to go from strength to strength and the purpose of the Awards Evening is to celebrate and give formal recognition to all the girls’ outstanding successes. The event also highlights and promotes the important role that sport and physical activity plays in all of our everyday lives. Participating in physical activity and sport provides a wealth of benefits - physical, emotional, psychological, and social. It also helps to build character, encourages emotional growth, and teaches players and spectators the value of honesty, respect, teamwork, dedication, and commitment.

A memorable part of the evening was the inspirational talk from our guest speaker Maddie Hinch as she told the story of her journey from school and club Hockey to representing the country at the Olympic Games. During her speech, complete with film and audio of some of her career highlights, Maddie focussed on the benefits of setbacks and how the experience of things going wrong can ultimately lead to success. Maddie has faced many challenges along the way to Olympic Gold and she encouraged the girls to keep trying in the face of adversity saying “Fundamentally we cannot choose what happens to us. But, we can choose how we respond to events.”

Following the formal presentations the Award winners were lucky enough to have group photos taken with Maddie, complete with her Olympic Gold medal, which she had brought along to show the girls.