Athletes Balázs Baji, Péter Biros and László Cseh for fit and healthy children
Three top-level athletes have joined the sport-promoting European School Sport Day® in Hungary. The event, which is organized by the Hungarian School Sport Federation (HSSF) and its international partners for the last Friday of September each year, was held in Hungary alone at nearly 1,000 schools with the participation of a quarter-million students last year. The organizers hope that this year the number of schools involved will exceed 1,000, and that the children will rejoice in playing sports in their community.
On the European School Sport Day (ESSD®) the students of registered schools engage in a freely chosen sport activity for at least two-hours. The only recommended element of the programme is a collective running in the length of the current year, i.e. 2017 meters this year. The goal of the sport day is that kids experience the joy of unreserved, jointly performed physical activity.
Sports supplier Decathlon has joined the initiative with a donation: one school has been selected from the institutions that have registered for the event before 8 September. Decathlon will deploy sport equipment to this school, thus, children will be able to choose from a larger variety of sport programmes. From among 400 acceding Hungarian schools the vote fell on the Gyula Andrássy High School of Békéscsaba, a location that is considered a flagship event site by HSSF.
This year three top-level Hungarian athletes will join the flagship events: Balázs Baji World Championship bronze medal winner and European Championship silver medallist hurdler who returns to his former school, the Gyula Andrássy High School in Békéscsaba, Péter Biros three-time Olympic gold medallist water polo player visits the József Hevesi Elementary School in the city of Heves, and László Cseh four-time Olympic silver medallist swimmer plays sports with the students of the St. Ladislaus High School in Budapest.
“I’ve just got out of the school bench; so I might say that the studies and sport made up my whole life till now. Many people say it is difficult to harmonize learning with sport during high school and university years. This is indeed true, it resulted in abandonment in my case as well, however I owe many memories and friends to both sport and university, and that made it worth the effort” – said Balázs Baji.
It is not long ago that Péter Biros left the swimming pool in Eger to start his career as trainer. Besides, as a father of two he got a first taste of bringing regular sport into the life of children: “In our family it was obvious that the boys go in for sports; this is what they saw from me since they were born. They are full of energy, so after sitting at school for long hours it is important they get to move every day. I can only hope, it will stay like that with them in the future” – commented the role model of the people in Eger.
“I accepted the invitation and decided to participate on the sport day because it is our – the renowned athletes’ – major task to show a good example to the next generation. It is important to awaken the desire and the curiosity in children to try even more sport disciplines, and to select one in which they can be really successful, and find pleasure and friends in it. I hope that many kids will feel like trying out sports this day” – said László Cseh.
HSSF also announced a call for vloggers in its programme: youngsters participating in the event are encouraged to document the European School Sport Day at their school, and prepare video blogs with #ESSD and #BeActive hashtags. Applicants, whose works are found the best by the professional jury of HSSF, will receive valuable Decathlon vouchers. The call for applications and the detailed rules of participation are available here. You can register for European School Sport Day here.
About the European School Sport Day
The European School Sport Day was inspired by the Hungarian School Sport Day which evolved to an international event in nearly ten years. In 2015 Bulgaria and Poland have joined, and already in 2016 some 1.5 million students of 20 European countries participated with school sport programmes. The sport day is realized this year again in frames of the European Week of Sport (an initiative of the European Commission) between 23 and 30 September. The campaign spreads across the whole of Europe and encourages the citizens of the continent to move as much as possible during the week, and then remain active all year long, or even throughout the entire life.
