Hi, I’m Jake, and I’m the Student Services Manager at Langports Brisbane. I’ve worked at Langports for over 7 years, and in that time I’ve met a lot of students, and made lots of friends from all over the world!
Something quite important on the Queensland sporting calendar happened last week; the Langports Games! Twice a year, Langports Brisbane and Langports Gold Coast meet at a sports centre half way between Brisbane and the Gold Coast to play Badminton, Basketball, Table Tennis, Touch Rugby, Volleyball and both Boys and Girls Soccer. We’ve been doing this now for the past 3 years, and each year it has been highly successful. There is always amazing involvement from staff and students alike, with over 300 students either playing sports or supporting!
In past blog posts, we’ve reviewed the games from a results point of view, but in this post I’d like to take the opportunity to shine a light on the hard work of some of our Langports staff members who make the day such a success.
The biggest thank you must go to our amazing Activities Officers, Keilie (Brisbane) and Nichole (Gold Coast) who do all of the hard work, preparation for ‘The Games’ begin months beforehand, and there are so many things to organise!
First there is the venue to book. This is much more than just sending an email! There are risk assessments to be done, sports fields and courts to arrange and referees to organise! Believe it or not this is the easy part!
Next, Keilie and Nichole need to start signing students up to join our sports teams. There is always great enthusiasm for our Volleyball and Soccer teams, with a little more effort needing to go into getting players for our other sports. Weekly training sessions need to be arranged, with different staff members taking the students for each sport, and a final team selection needs to be made.
Whilst all of this is going on, tickets need to be sold, and t-shirts need to be ordered. Trying to get the sizes for 300+ t-shirts can be a little challenging. Once they are ordered, Keilie and Nichole just have to hope that they arrive on time!
After all this, final confirmation of numbers needs to be worked out so the buses can be booked. It’s quite an impressive sight seeing 6 full busloads of Langports students arriving at the sports centre at the same time.
Finally, the day of the Langports games arrives, and because of Keilie and Nichole’s hard work, the day runs smoothly. I know that both Activity Officers are absolutely exhausted by the end of the day, but I’m sure that they are both energized and satisfied by how much the students have enjoyed the whole event.
A huge thank you also needs to go to all other staff members who helped with the training sessions and the running of the day. Without your assistance, the day would not nearly be so successful.
On a final note, I’m pleased to report that Langports Brisbane won the day overall, our first (but surely not last) victory!
