What Sport Unlocks for Students, in School and Life
- Comunicacion San Roberto International
- Oct 9
- 1 min read
Ciara, a student at Nord Anglia’s British International School of Shanghai (BISS), remembers one thing very clearly about Year 6: she couldn’t run or throw.
“I was very uncoordinated,” she says, laughing. She skipped cross-country, dreaded warm-ups, and always got a stitch. But then something changed.
Marlon Devonish, a coach at BISS and gold-medal-winning Olympian, encouraged her to try—first with throwing, then running. She got better. He noted and pointed out how much she was improving. She felt the progress and dug in more. Her confidence grew with her abilities. Slowly, the girl who avoided sport was winning tournaments. She became a team captain and an award-winning multi-sport athlete. A local football academy scouted her.
Along the way, she learned more than how to sprint or save a goal: she learned to lead, to persevere, and to believe in herself. “It was always that reassurance from him, every year, telling me how much I had improved,” she said.
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