Southfields students doing BTEC Sport and who work in the Aspire have for the past two years been going to Linden Lodge School in Southfields to support the staff in delivering extra curricular activites.  Linden Lodge is a special school for students with visual impairment or multi-disabled visual impairment.  Danny Sinclair from Linden Lodge said "I just want to tell you how deeply impressed and immensely grateful I am for the outstanding input from Jason West and and Yasmin Arthur and to see all of our children fully engaged and thoroughly enjoying themselves.  From having our meetings in regards to giving the students more training, the students are now comfortable in their role and are able to fully demonstrate their professionalism and training.  Linden Lodge students have fully benefited from the successful link with Southfields Community College.  This is a partnership that I look forward to seeing getting stronger."

UPDATE:  The Link Continues to Grow.
On Wednesday 9th June, nine of our year 9 students were selected to take part in a challenge for a Channel 4 programme.  Ade Adepitan (British wheelchair basketball player) and Iwan Thomas (British athlete) have been set a challenge to create a Goalball team using 3 visually impaired students and 3 sighted students.  Goalball is a sport in which participants compete in teams of three wearing blacked out goggles and aim to throw a ball that has bells embedded in it into the opponents' goal.  They must use the sound of the bell to judge the position and movement of the ball.  Our school and Linden Lodge are the two schools that Ade is working with, while Iwan will be working with schools in Southampton.

Our students spent the afternoon meeting the Channel 4 team and the Linden Lodge students in front of the camera.  They were put through their paces by Ade with a series of physical tests so that he could have a look at their individual attributes and then had a go at a few Goalball drills.

The Channel 4 team and Ade were massively impressed with our students, as they all worked and behaved excellently.  The afternoon was highly enjoyable with a great working atmosphere.  A big well done to Haris Kekic, Icilio Silva, Thomas Peckham, Aaron Briggs, Jake Dancer and Peter Assor.  Special "well dones" to Samuel Ige, Omar Coward and Matthew Davies who were the three lucky students selected by Ade for the final squad.  They will be taking part in a series of training sessions and trips over the next few months, before competing in a Goalball match against Iwan's team.  The programme will be broadcast on Channel 4 on Saturday 28th August at 13:00.