18 TH November 2015 - Article

Tennis. Football. Rugby. All popular sports, so why is there hardly any

teenagers playing them? Is it due to just laziness, or maybe they’re too busy?

Education takes up the majority of a teenager’s life. For most teens, school

doesn’t end when the bell rings. They are welcomed home to a never ending

amount of homework, coursework and revision.

A new documentary on Channel 4 investigates this issue further by presenting

a mix of expert opinions, such as a professional boxing coach, a long-term

dance examiner and a P.E teacher, to get an overall opinion on teens in sport.

Thomas Chaney, coach of professional boxer Frankie Gavin and owner of

Hall Green Boxing Club, found that the teens he coaches are not very

‘academicle, if that’s a word’. Gavin Shephard, Head of the P.E department at

Solihull 6th Form, talks about the ‘post 16 gap’ as teens appear to stop

focusing on sport at this point. Brenda Yeates, owner of Lehmiski Academy of

Dance and a Fellow and Senior Examiner and Lecturer for the International

Dance Teachers Association, talks about her experiences of teaching dance

outside of school and believes that sport should be done all the time as it

‘helps to stimulate the brain and keep the body in good shape’.

In ‘Teens in Sport’ we ask the public questions about sport. It appears

that the younger generations either focus on education alone, sport alone or

neither. Most teenagers exclude sport almost entirely to focus on their

education. This may not seem like such a bad thing as they’re getting the

grades they need to further their life after their school life but what if their life

after school is full of health problems and a lack of good memories because

they never came out of their revision bubble.

Did you know that three quarters of teenagers are not getting the

recommended 60 minutes of daily exercise and that a survey showed that

69% of teens spend more time on their homework than doing sport? It does

seem like education is taking over teenagers lives but maybe it’s only certain

sports or certain academic subjects that are causing this, you wont find out

unless you watch ‘Teens in Sport’. If education is the reason that teens are

not getting enough exercise then surely something should be done to change

this. ‘Teens in Sport’ will open your eyes to the issues that teenagers are

facing by focusing solely on education, so tune in on Saturday 2nd of January

2016 on Channel 4.