Old Leamingtonians Rugby Club helps primary school in Leamington by providing home schooling videos

Old Leamingtonians Rugby Club while unable to pursue outdoor sporting activities have found a way of reaching out to the local community by making short videos to enhance lockdown home schooling for the pupils of Kingsway Primary School in Leamington.

Started with an idea from OL Ladies full back Jane Towey who is a teacher and sports co-ordinator at the school a number of members have been putting together short video clips of activities and exercises which the Club hopes will be of great interest to the young recipients.

Spurred by Jane’s idea, OLs Ladies team sprang into action, creating fun videos edited by vice-captain Anna Tracy.

The project soon became a whole club activity with the Mini & Juniors getting on board by sharing the video on rugby skills that they had created in the last lock down.

Within the first week, the videos had been viewed more than 150 times.

In these extremely challenging times for many families, the Club wanted to stay in touch with the Community and do more to help. Looking for who else could be useful to the project, the Ladies contacted the Club’s kit supplier Akuma Sport who were more than happy to donate some OLs branded kit to the school to be used as prizes, which was handed over in a socially distanced meeting (photos attached).

Describing the videos, Jane said: “They explore broad and imaginative experiences from members of our extended community.

"It’s really positive for the youngsters to know that people they have never met are thinking about them and wanting to share aspects of their life with them.

"It also enables OLs to continue to maintain contact and cohesion between isolated members through helping the local community; after all we are in this together.”

The videos are on YouTube and can be accessed by anyone by typing in the search box OLRFC and Kingsway.

Club Chairman Lucas Wager said that he hopes that by sharing the videos, other schools and parents struggling with home-schooling might find them useful.

Videos so far produced include fun facts about Belgium, OLRFC Minis & Juniors Rugby Skills, how to change a light switch (please seek professional help for this), getting creative with plastic and speedway bikes.

More videos are in the pipeline.