A story from Elk Island Public Schools, Sherwood Park, Alberta
Last year, a student at Clover Bar Junior High in Sherwood Park, Alberta could barely get through the school doors. On the rare days they made it in, the school day often ended early. This year, they have missed one week. That week was because they had the flu.
“They’re a completely different kid,” says Cherum Orr, Principal of Clover Bar Junior High. “It’s really life-changing.”
The difference? A programme built on a simple but powerful idea: that daily movement belongs at the centre of a young person’s school experience — not on the edges of it.
When Movement Becomes the Method
The Sport for Life programme at Clover Bar Junior High, part of Elk Island Public Schools in Alberta, Canada, and supported through the SUCCEED framework, started six or seven years ago as a single Grade 7 class. Today it serves more than 300 students across Grades 7 to 9. Built around the Sport for Life pillars and the Long-Term Development in Sport and Physical Activity framework, it replaces physical education, health and wellness, and one option course — a full quarter of a student’s school week — with daily movement-based learning.
The activity list is deliberately broad: swimming, scuba diving, curling, flag football, mountain biking, CrossFit, hot yoga, downhill skiing. Single blocks take place in school facilities. Double blocks head out into the community. Some activities take a full day. Academic time is protected through built-in makeup blocks, and on overnight trips students complete schoolwork together in the evenings.
But what makes the programme work isn’t the activity list. It’s who it’s for.
Elite young athletes take part alongside students who are trying certain activities for the first time. Students with ADHD, students with high energy, students who spent earlier years being told to stop moving and stop talking — all of them find something here that a conventional school day couldn’t offer. “They’re able to get all their wiggles out,” Cherum says, “so then they’re able to focus more in their other classes.”
A Shift in Thinking
In the early years, the programme’s energy centred on the big moments — the year-end challenges, the culminating trips, the experiences students built toward. Those moments still matter. But the team’s understanding of where the real impact lives has quietly shifted.
“We recognise more so the impact of the daily movement and how much that’s benefiting students on the daily,” Cherum reflects. “Instead of it just being about focusing on a year-end goal, it is now looking at what the daily benefits are from the programme and how that is building the student as a whole athlete from Grade 7 to Grade 9.”
That shift — from destination to daily practice — is at the heart of what Sport for All looks like in a school setting. Not sport as a prize for the already-confident. Not physical activity as an extra. Movement as something every young person deserves access to, every day, as part of how they learn and grow.
What Families Are Noticing
The changes aren’t staying inside the school walls. At a recent parent council meeting, a mother stopped Cherum to tell her that her daughter had developed a level of confidence and willingness to challenge herself that she had never seen before. “My daughter has so much confidence because of this programme,” she said. “I have never seen her step out and challenge herself like she has this year.”
Students are equally articulate about it. Twelve and fourteen-year-olds tell their teachers the programme helps them focus and makes them like school more. Students whose attendance in Grade 6 was, in Cherum’s words, “atrocious” are now the ones who don’t want to miss a day.
The programme has also shifted how students relate to each other. Because everyone participates together regardless of ability, students learn to support teammates at different skill levels — developing empathy, patience, and sportsmanship alongside their physical skills.
Built on People, Not Marketing
The programme hasn’t grown through advertising. It grows through trust. Clover Bar hosts an information night at its annual open house, and from there, families talk to other families. Local CrossFit instructors, fitness studios, and recreation facilities open their doors early so students can be on the mats by 8:45 a.m. Eight staff members — including five Sport for Life teachers — are currently completing their Physical Literacy Leader certification. No one was required to sign up. Everyone said yes.
For Cherum, the foundation of any programme like this is the people delivering it. “You have to be very specific about who is delivering the programme. You need to have people who are passionate, who are skilled, people who also live Sport for Life — adults who are modelling what it looks like as a grown-up.”
Her advice to any school considering something similar is to resist the urge to start big. “Start small and let it grow. When the programme works for kids, people talk.”
At Elk Island Public Schools, those conversations are already spreading — with discussions now underway about bringing Sport for Life foundations into the elementary years, starting with Grades 4 to 6. The doors that once felt impossible to get through are, for more and more students, the ones they can’t wait to walk into.
SUCCEED Series: Stories of Impact
This story is featured as part of SUCCEED Stories, through the SUCCEED Framework. SUCCEED (Supporting Communities Empowerment & Development through Sport for All) is a global framework dedicated to fostering community empowerment and development through capacity building in Sport for All. Led by TAFISA in collaboration with the IOC through its Olympism365 strategy, SUCCEED aims to provide a unified and synergistic approach towards building the capacity of Sport for All stakeholders.