Olympics Unleashed back in NSW classrooms

After more than six months of online sessions, Olympics Unleashed was finally welcomed back into classroom across New South Wales.

Lomandra School in Campbelltown hosted the first in-person school visit since the pandemic forced the program online for the last two terms of 2021. The visit was a huge success. Lomandra School is for children with severe challenging behaviours and/or mental health issues, and is the largest school of its kind in the state.

Dual Olympian and Athens 2004 gold medallist in sport shooting Suzanne Corry gave an inspirational presentation to the students. She shared her story about the importance of goal setting, resilience and how this led to her own personal success.

Both students and teachers at the school were equally excited by the presentation, Assistant Principal Adam Moore said “Suzy was awesome, I think I may have enjoyed holding the medal more than some of the students!”

World Teacher’s Day winner – Leongatha Primary School

For the first time Olympics Unleashed ventured into regional Victoria in visiting Leongatha Primary School. The visit came about after Integration Aide Aliesha Wrigley won the Olympics Unleashed World Teacher’s Day prize draw.

Long jumper and two-time Olympian (Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020) Brooke Stratton presented the Olympics Unleashed session to year five and six students at the school.

Brooke reflected on her career and how the challenges she’s faced can help students.

”I’ve spent pretty much my whole life, my whole career being resilient and being able to bounce back, so I’m glad they [the students] are able to take away some key messages there,“ Brooke said.

Leading into the session, Miss Wrigley and the Olympics Unleashed team organised an online session to introduce the school to Brooke prior to the day. Aliesha spoke about how this prepared students for the day and brought the whole school together.

“They have taken out so much from this session, you could just tell how inspired the kids were when they got to meet her,” Miss Wrigley said.

“It was so incredible that we got to have the Google meet session so all the kids from all the classes got to see her - not just the grade 5s and 6s. The whole school took so much out of it.”

Green & Gold Day + Olympics Unleashed TV

On Friday the 11th of February it was Green & Gold Day right across Australia. The day was the middle Friday of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, where the Australian Olympic Team was having our most successful Winter Games ever. Green & Gold Day served to multiply the excitement throughout the country.

Schools and business across Australia, as well as some of our most well-known landmarks, lit up in our national colours to celebrate the day and support our Aussies completing overseas.

We also had the first winter edition of Olympics Unleashed TV, hosted by dual Olympian Elka Whalan on Green & Gold Day.

Broadcast from Ice Zoo ice skating arena in Sydney’s south, Elka talked to Rohan Chapman-Davies about his experiences competing at PyeongChang 2018 in the men’s mogul skiing event and what it is like to go to a Winter Games.

The fun didn’t stop there, the show headed offshore to Beijing where Elka caught up with the men’s mogul team in the Village to chat about Village life.

She also caught up with Beijing bronze medallist Tess Coady to get some tips on resilience and much more.