GB Basketball inspire school children at the University of Surrey for UK Inspire Day
Friday 20 July 2012
School children from George Abbot School in Guildford were treated to an Olympic experience today when they met the GB Women’s Basketball team at University of Surrey owned Surrey Sports Park.
The event is part of national UK Inspire Day, a celebration of the London 2012 Inspire programme – a family of over 2700 projects across the UK that have been inspired by the Games to do something special in their local communities. The University of Surrey’s ‘Celebrate Surrey’ programme of events is one of 147 exceptional Inspire projects in the South East to have been awarded the coveted London 2012 Inspire mark.
Besides meeting the team, the school children attending the event also got the chance to watch them train, and to ride a ‘virtual’ cycling route based on the London 2012 road race route in Surrey Sports Park’s bike studio. GB Basketball are one of 16 Olympic and Paralympic teams based at Surrey Sports Park in the run up to the Games.
Seb Coe, Chair of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games said: “The University of Surrey is one of over two thousand seven hundred projects using the Inspire mark across the United Kingdom. I’d like to thank the organisation for all their support and hard work using the power of the Games to inspire change.”
Paul Blanchard, CEO of Surrey Sports Park at the University of Surrey, said: “We are delighted to have been awarded the UK Inspire mark for our ‘Celebrate Surrey’ initiative. We have a host of countries training here in the run up to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. We are looking forward to giving them a warm Surrey welcome and to staging some inspiring activities which will both showcase their talent and inspire the local community to come and find out more about what Surrey Sports Park and the University have to offer.”
For further information go to the University of Surrey website or follow @surreysportpark #celebratesurrey to keep up-to-date with Olympic and Paralympic news.
