Building resilience through sport

At Rydes Hill, every child has the opportunity to participate in team and individual sports and activities at a level that challenges them but which suits their ability. Through perseverance and team work, our children learn to win and lose gracefully, overcome difficulties and build resilience.

Our broad sporting programme is taught by our specialist PE teachers and includes athletics, cricket, cross country, dance, gymnastics, football, health related fitness, hockey, netball, swimming and tennis. Whilst we enjoy tremendous competitive sporting success, our emphasis is always focused on the enjoyment of participation.

All children from Kindergarten (Reception) to Form One (Year 6) attend weekly off-site swimming lessons taught by specialist swim coaches at the local Surrey Sports Park. The focus of our swimming programme is determined by each individual child’s ability and ranges from boosting individual confidence in the water to being able to swim unaided to maintaining the correct technique in the four major swimming strokes: front crawl, back stroke, breaststroke and butterfly. The higher ability girls are also introduced to core life-saving skills.

In addition to our expansive sporting curriculum, we offer numerous weekly lunchtime and after school sports clubs. These include athletics, ballet, cross country and fitness, hockey, netball, fencing, tennis and yoga.

“The School’s ‘small but mighty’ spirit is evident on the sporting field where Rydes Hill frequently out-competes prestigious independent schools triple or quadruple their size.”

Independent Schools Yearbook, 2022-2023