British boarding school sports academies
Culford School has recently announced a new Football Academy, which promises to combine a first-class education with a passion for football. Hoping to emulate the success of this English boarding school’s existing tennis and golf academies, this new initiative will be delivered in partnership with Ipswich Town Football Club, with academy pupils receiving individual development plans designed by the Director of Football, Alan Lee, a UEFA ‘A’ and FA Advanced Youth Licensed coach. The programme will also provide pathways into the professional/semi-professional game and opportunities for scholarships to universities in the United States.
It was only last September that we blogged about the Football Academy based at Ackworth School, which is also a Talent Development Centre for table tennis, so we thought a brief round-up of some of our schools’ other sporting specialisations could be useful.
Boarding school golf has also featured in our blog, with the announcement of a new Golf Academy and Golf Scholarships at King William’s College. In fact, we work with several other schools that specialise in golf. Unsurprisingly, given the game’s provenance, three of the Scottish schools we recommend have golf academies: Loretto School, Merchiston Castle School and St Leonards School, which has St Andrew’s, the world’s most famous golf links, right on its doorstep.
South of the border, golf is just one of the sports offered on an academy basis at Ellesmere College, alongside cricket, football, rugby, shooting, swimming and tennis. In fact, in 2015 the school became one of only nine schools in the world to be given a World Academy of Sport (WAoS) accreditation, which enables national and international level athletes to follow a more flexible study programme to achieve the International Baccalaureate Diploma (IB).
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the sports academies and specialisations at the British boarding schools we recommend, and even outside a formal academy structure, several offer performance programmes providing quality support to athletes who are looking to become elite sportsmen or women. In addition, alongside the mainstream sports, such as rugby, football, hockey and netball, many of our schools also support students interested and/or talented in, for example, fencing, rowing and equestrianism.
In short, if someone in your family would like their passion for sport to fit around the essentials of education, please contact us as we’re sure we’ll know of the right British boarding school for them.
Photo by kind permission of Culford School.
