Media and Research

Country’s top athletes to help them set and achieve personal ambitions

6 October 2011

The Champions in Schools (CiS) programme uses the power of role models to create positive change in the lives and lifestyles.

Pupils across the region will be motivated to pursue a healthy and active lifestyle, appreciate the value of hard work and adopt a positive, winning attitude with help from some of the country’s leading sportsmen and women.

Head of Community Information and Learning Lizanne McMurrich said: “Athletes will show pupils that striving to reach their ambitions and making positive lifestyle choices can produce fulfilling and rewarding results.”

The programme is aimed at pupils in their late primary and early secondary school years. Each athlete will be given a group of youngsters to work with and deliver workshops three times a year.

Former Scottish rugby internationalist Sir Bill Gammell has a lifelong interest in building winning teams and encouraging self-determination and was at the launch at Calderhead High.

The founder of the Scottish Institute of Sport Foundation, now known as the Winning Scotland Foundation, said: “Champions in Schools is about inspiring young people to be the best they can be.

“Our mission is to create that positive winning attitude throughout Scotland - to build national pride, world reputation and international success.”

The Winning Scotland Foundation’s programme manager, Richard Orr, added it was a huge boost for the CiS scheme to be introduced in North Lanarkshire.

Mr Orr said: “It is giving more of Scotland’s teenage pupils the opportunity to interact with some of Scotland’s top sporting role models and to learn about the importance of adopting a positive attitude to life through the likes of goal setting and taking a healthy attitude to nutrition and exercise.”