1,800 children across the region throw themselves into annual sports festival
Over 130 schools took part in the 2024 Black Country School Games Festival which has been running for more than a decade.
Around 1,800 students took part in a host of sports events at the Walsall campus of the University of Wolverhampton, yesterday(27).
Now in its 13th year, this edition featured pupils from Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton as they threw themselves into a range of sports including basketball, cricket, dodgeball, handball, netball, and multi-sports for SEND teams.
Two taster activity trails also ran alongside the sports competitions, with Kabbadi and Baseball selected as the new events for this year.
Execs of the festival spoke today of the importance of creating an atmosphere that is both inclusive and competitive, where the core focus is to get young people across the region off their seats and living a more active life in a drive to build confidence for students as they grow up to be the next leaders of the community.
Each year the Black Country School Games supports the charity ‘Smile for Joel’.
It was set up in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in Tunisia when 38 tourists died, including Joel, his grandad Pat and his uncle Ade.
Joel Richards was one of the young ambassadors at the very first Black Country School Games Festival back in 2011.
