The impact of the sport tech arms race on cultural capital, experience and pedagogy.
Over a number of years, I’ve never ceased to be amazed by the eyes filled with wonder and envious conversation – overheard, witnessed or that I have been a part of – when discussing other schools’ lists of haves and wants…
Following the review of sport and PE here at St Jo’s, I have put a lot of thought into these remembered conversations.
With the new academic year come daily LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook posts advertising an endless list of sporting technologies that your son or daughter can have access to at one institution or another. But I am yet to see anyone advertise the sports coaching and teaching the children will have access to on a specific sporting pathway in a school.
So here we go. I will attempt to advertise St Joseph’s College in that way and define what makes St Jo’s different in one paragraph. So here are headlines – not trendy soundbites but sound, solid benefits.
Over 125 years of combined coaching and physical education experience. Nineteen members of staff within the sports faculty. Specialists running every sports team across the whole College from Prep right through to Sixth Form, all of whom know how to use our state-of-the-art technology, including Catapult GPS, Hudl video analysis software, Veo video hardware and software and our onsite dedicated gym. More importantly still, all of whom have played and or coached and taught in high performance sporting environments. All faculty members have walked the path that your sons and daughters are currently walking and all are more empathetic, sensitive to the game and able to pivot at a moment notice far quicker and more intelligently than any bit of coaching software! Did I mention more than 12 decades of specialist coaching and physical education experience between them?
That said, and in line with our educational philosophy, we will always invest in the people. The people are the centre of our universe and we are the master of the ship that navigates it.
Mr O’Riordan
Director of Sport
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