Sport England took a step towards getting 300,000 students doing more sport today when it awarded £500,000 to build new on-campus sports facilities in Suffolk.
Students and the local community can look forward to a four court sports hall, fitness gym and changing rooms as part of the £3.5 million development at Suffolk New College in Ipswich.
Sports on offer will include trampolining, netball, judo, kick boxing, archery, basketball and five-a-side football.
Dave Muller is Principal of the college, which has over a thousand 16-19 year old students. He said:
“This is an exciting project. It is critical in terms of supporting the health and fitness of young people in south Suffolk.”
Chris Perks, Sport England’s East of England director said:
“Providing quality sports facilities is important if we are going to be successful in getting 300,000 college and university students taking part in more regular sport by 2013. We are pleased to be working with Suffolk New College and the Learning and Skills Council to create new sporting opportunities.”
Work on the development will get underway in July 2009. Once completed it will increase sports participation in the area and help to sustain local clubs, coaches and volunteers. As many as 1.5 million visits are expected to be made to the centre over the next 21 years.
Creating sporting opportunities in further education colleges is a high priority for Sport England as it works to cut the number of young people dropping out of sport between the ages of 16 and 18. Further and higher education also has a critical role to play in Sport England’s ambitious aim of getting one million people doing more sport by 2013.
For more information about Sport England’s new strategy and how we are delivering it with national governing bodies of sport and our partners, click here
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