Olympia celebrates after reaching 50-school landmark

Kent-based Olympia Boxing CIC has underlined its success as a London 2012 Olympics legacy project by reaching the milestone of taking the sport into 50 schools each week.

The outreach programme helps bridge the gap in communities and takes boxing at a basic level back into educational settings.

It is run by a team of dedicated coaches who are all England Boxing-qualified and members of clubs.

The hope is to continue the programme’s expansion to a point where they are delivering 100 sessions per week, with a total of 89 currently delivered.

Director and Coach Wayne Smith said: “I used to run around delivering five or six school and community sessions during the day before heading to my club St Mary’s ABC in the evenings and used to dream and joke of taking boxing into 50 schools. But now it is a reality it is absolutely amazing.

“We now have a fantastic team of 10 which is enabling us to expand the reach of boxing and we are now mentoring more young people to join our team to expand even further.

“In schools ,we are delivering before-school clubs, curriculum PE, lunchtime clubs and after-school clubs, while in the community our age range is from five to 88-year-olds.”

The range of sessions delivered by Olympia Boxing include  Rookies (five to eight years), Youth (none to 18 years) and Community BOX Fitness (for adults), plus specialist programmes Thera-Box (for children and young people with additional needs) and Boxing 4 Dementia and Boxing 4 Parkinsons.

The Community Interest Company works with a number of funding partners and community organisations in a bid to break down all barriers for participating in boxing, sport and physical activity, with nearly all community programmes completely free to participants.

Smith added: “I am pretty sure this hasn’t been achieved before in boxing, and we are continuing to grow and expand over the south east delivering our work to as many as possible.

“Every school or area we deliver our programmes in, we give the details of the nearest England Boxing-affiliated club, so we help continue the growth in boxing clubs too.”

If you would like learn more, go to www.olympiaboxing.co.uk or go to @olympiaboxing across all social media platforms.

Note: Picture is pre Covid-19.