The Educator Magazine UK May- August 2023 - Magazine - Page 70
CREATING A
WINNING SPORTS
HALL SOLUTION
By Jason Lynock, Sales Director, Smart-Space
Increasingly, schools are looking to
maximise every bit of their space and a
pop-up sports hall is often the answer. It’s
a way of transforming a scruffy old tennis
court or unused area of land into something
that’s impressive, useful and potentially
lucrative. This is a really clever way of
increasing your school’s sports facilities –
simply by throwing a canopy over
something that already exists.
Affordable and flexible
To make the most of existing sports space,
you don’t need to start digging footings
or making huge investments. The sports
coverings can be temporary or permanent,
hired or bought. With Smart-Space you can
change your mind at any point of the
process and buy it outright if you feel it’s
going to be working for you longer term
and it makes better financial sense.
A pop-up sports hall is a really affordable
option.
Create a year-round facility
By changing the use of an open air facility
to a covered one, you obviously extend its
play time. Consider most hard courts where
netball or tennis is typically played. They’re
used for just a short time of the year thanks
to our inclement British weather. But, with
beautiful simplicity, you can easily, quickly
and inexpensively add a canopy or
temporary building over it to reap all
the benefits of all-weather play. We have
worked with many schools in the spirit of
recycling and maximising an existing
investment to create outdoor courts and
pitches that can be used all year round.
Summer sports don’t need to stop
during the winter. Your fanatical footballers,
cricket devotees and tennis enthusiasts can
carry on training twelve months of the year
– an absolute necessity for serious athletes.
It also puts your school on the map for
being able to share its facilities with
neighbouring teams.
Supporting health and well-being
Playing a sport in a covered space provides
many of the benefits of being outside.
Your players can enjoy plenty of space,
fresh air and unlimited access whilst
avoiding the downside of wet, slippery or
muddy sports facilities.
The benefits of physical activity are
well-documented for all round well-being
and positive mental health. By investing
in a multi-sports venue you can offer all
kinds of exercise from the obvious racquet
sports, cricket, football and netball to others
including MMA, aerobics classes and more
relaxing pursuits such as yoga and tai chi.
Open up to your community
By investing in a pop-up sports hall
you also have the option of making your
facilities available to the local community.
There are numerous options such as taking
regular group bookings or simply being
open during evenings and weekends for
a range of different offerings. We know of
several customers who reserve their hall
for local sports teams (badminton, tennis,
cricket for example) on specific days of the
week whilst making the hall generally
available for different sports the rest
of the time.
Opening up your sports hall is a great way
to create revenue from your investment and
cover some or all of your costs. And, as the
hall is covered, the revenue isn’t seasonal.
Think big (or not)
You can take the project further and add
separate areas for changing facilities, lockers
and refreshments and include extra task
lighting to create more of a club feel.
A recent school in Deepings, near
Peterborough, incorporated a smaller
building to the front of its pop-up hall
which is used as a foyer and waiting area.
This small addition is really useful but also
protects the main hall from dirty shoes and
wet weather. During exam times the foyer
can be utilised as a registration area for
example.
There are, of course, options to upgrade the
floor or equipment. We also offer a really
affordable floor option via tiles that clip
together and come complete with court
markings – like a huge sports jigsaw! This
makes replacing some or all of your existing
floor another easy upgrade if you choose to.
However if you want to keep it simple,
affordable and make more of what you
already have, a straightforward canopy is a
great solution on its own.
Use our knowledge
At Smart-Space we have heavily
invested in our in-house expertise so we are
able to visit, do a thorough site survey and
offer different options. We try to make the
most of any existing infrastructure when we
propose different locations for your
building. This can save significant amounts
of money if we are able to compliantly
and safely link your pop-up sports hall to
a school building to access existing IT,
telecoms and utilities.
Talk to us at Smart-Space about the
different options. We have lots of experience
of providing this kind of service to schools:
working safely and with full responsibility
for our directly employed team whilst on
site. It’s a win-win for everyone.