Festival is a hit with golden girl Danielle Brown

Paralympian Danielle Brown was the guest of honour at the Shropshire Homes School Sport Festival which was held at Shrewsbury Sports Village on Tuesday.

Around 800 youngsters from across Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin attended the event to compete in a range of sports including cycling, rounders, archery, kwik-cricket, dodgeball and orienteering.

Brown, pictured inset, shot to fame after winning an Olympic gold medal in archery at the 2008 games in Beijing.

She then repeated the feat at London in 2012 with the two medals sandwiching a third gold – achieved at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi in 2010.

Now a successful businesswoman, Brown travels around the UK trying to encourage youngsters to take up sport due to the physical and mental benefits it can bring.

And she feels events like the School Sport Festival will be of great benefit to youngsters in the county.

“I think the Sport Festival was absolutely fantastic and it was a real privilege for me to attend and watch some very talented youngsters,” Brown said.

“All the kids were really engaged and really enjoying themselves.

“They were really enthusiastic and all trying really hard.

“They were also cheering each other on which was really nice to see.

“Events like this are really important. I didn’t have anything like it when I was at school. In fact, my sports day actually cancelled – we didn’t do it.

“It’s so important to engage children in sport and in particular sports they don’t often get to try.

“Sport has taught me so many skills that have allowed me to be successful in every day life.

“It has helped me with my self-esteem. It helped me with things like time management and discipline. It also helped teach me the benefit of perseverance and self-motivation. But the biggest thing it gave me was confidence.

“Confidence is something a lot of young people struggle with. But sport really helps with that.”

A total of 54 different schools took part in Tuesday’s Festival which was organised by Energize – a not-for-profit organisation which aims to get young people in Shropshire playing sport.

The day was a culmination of of months of competition for students who competed against neighbouring schools to make it to the finals day.

Each finalist represented one of six School Games areas – Shrewsbury, East Shropshire, North Shropshire, South Shropshire and two areas from Telford & Wrekin.

And it was Shrewsbury who won the overall competition for the first time, narrowly finishing ahead of last year’s winners East Shropshire.

Chris Child, chief executive of Energize, felt the Sports Festival was a huge success.

“The festival is just the tip of the iceberg because we are always encouraging children to play sport and take up new sports,” he said.

“On Tuesday we had approximately 800 children who we wanted to have the time of their lives. We wanted them to enjoy taking part in their specific event but also try lots of other sports.

“One of our main tasks is to encourage youngsters to feel confident and believe in themselves enough to try new things.

That is one of the things that we really aim for and we believe everyone went away having had a positive experience.

“Hopefully, the next time they get offered the opportunity to play cricket or go orienteering – they will feel confident enough to be able to join in.”