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The new academy season is kicking off at the British School of Bahrain (BSB) with a host of new activities for the young and old alike, writes Stan Szecowka.
The Hamala-based school was the first on the island to offer after-school activities in a series of authoritative and organised sporting and leisure activity sessions.
It captured the community’s imagination and although similar set-ups have followed, the BSB Academies continue to grow from strength-to-strength with more than 1,500 students snapping up courses in sports, music, drama and dance.
Teacher Titus Velasquez, 44, has recently taken over the reins and has been appointed as the new head of academies. He said: “Our goal is to provide the best sports and music training programmes to meet the life-long learning needs of the children.
“We develop programmes of every nature, by analysing a sport, developing a yearly musical periodic plan, and designing a specific conditioning programme to assist athletes and potential musicians to reach their training goals.
“We can also break down the programmes into phases, working on a one-step-at-a-time basis, to have athletes and musicians peaking at the right time.”
Mr Velasquez is well known on the local sporting scene. He has been with the school for eight years working as a PE/ICT teacher in the Infants Department. Moreover, he has been running the popular after-school clubs for sports and ICT as well as co-ordinating the celebrated BSB (winter/summer/Easter) camps.
The Academies of the British School of Bahrain were first founded in 2010, as reported exclusively in GulfWeekly, with the aim of bringing quality training programmes to meet the needs of the rapidly growing sports, music and recreation industry in Bahrain.
“We have created unique methods for assessing and evaluating athletes and musicians, to form a platform for developing tailored training and conditioning programmes, which are unique to anything you may have seen before,” said Mr Velasquez.
“The combination of our skills as athletic experts and qualified musicians and instrument specialists allows us to provide the best resources and facilities in the fields of sports and music.”
Under his arts baton he has six music teachers, a dance teacher and two drama teachers, and on the sports front, basketball, swimming, football, gymnastics, tennis and Taekwondo all have their respective heads and coaches, all qualified from the UK.
This year, the scope of the academies is being expanded. New courses have been introduced such as arts & crafts, trekking, photography, baking and cooking … and Mr Velasquez promises there are ‘lots more’ to come.
Prices vary but, for example, the football academy autumn term course costs children between BD100-110 and keen photographers pay a similar amount to learn how to improve their image taking.
* For more details visit www.thebsb.com or email academies@thebsb.com
