Do schools in your country have after school sports or clubs?

14 comments

1. The school of my children does offer extracurricular activities, but that’s not sports. Sports is something people do outside their schools (except for PE). I think that’s a good thing; there are more ‘worlds’ than just school and home.

2. In Spain there are generally none. If someone wants to practice a sport they do it apart from high school/university, they join a club and train and play.

   The truth is that I don’t see the need for the university to have teams. If someone wants to play something, they join a club.

   What there tends to be, at least at my university, are informal leagues. For example, the careers of all the faculties want to make a soccer league, so they do it but they organize it themselves.

3. No, if you want to play sport you go to one of your local clubs (to play more seriously) or go and play with friends and other people in football pitches.

   We have a tournament between different schools in a city, once a year, but nobody gives a fuck about it.

4. There’s nothing at high competitive level in the high schools, but the best students used to take part in the [Giochi della Gioventù](https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giochi_della_Giovent%C3%B9) now most of the competitions are at a local level (provincial or regional).

   Universities have the [CUS](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centro_Universitario_Sportivo_Italiano) University sports associations [here’s a list of the CUS’s](https://web.archive.org/web/20170911082453/http://www.cusi.it/SITO/chi-siamo/i-cus)
   that take part in the National University Championships, but they aren’t very followed, to be honest. The best students join the Italian national team at the Universiadi (The Olympic Games for university students).

5. My school had moutaineering club that organised trips at weekends during the year and 2 weeks long ones in summer.

   Appart from that, clubs were more related to culture: film club, theater club, writing club ect.

   We did not have sport clubs. Thats not a thing really. Some schools will have a voleyball or basketball or football team. But appart from those who play those sports, nobody else cares. They play matches but that is outside of school hours and just with the teams from your town. We don’t have cheerleading or support culture you see in American movies. The teams also do not walk around the school in team clothes. They only have the uniforms for the games and that not even all schools. Athletes are by no means the most popular people in the school. I only knew who was on a volleyball girls team because I was on it. I also knew some basketball guys because they trained once a week after classes the same time we did.

6. High school had loads of groups after school, mostly sport and music, and mostly just rugby, netball and orchestra. I may have exaggerated when I said loads.
   I think these should be available, but not really for me.

   University is entirely different and has every imaginable club or group in it

7. Not really. My Karate, Judo and Jiu Jitsu club were all independent clubs. We trained in the sports halls of local schools, but the access was granted by the town, not the individual schools.

   The clubs were all members of the German sports club assocation, for legal reasons with regards to insurance and such. I paid something like 30€ per year for each club.

8. I can only speak for French schools outside of Europe and an American school in Romania, but yes we had a bunch of after school clubs like music/choir, drama, debate and various sports (track, basketball, football, swimming, etc…). We also had more academic after school clubs like maths, journalism and robotics.

   It was pretty cool because we would compete against other schools and got to travel abroad for international tournaments.

   For university, at least in the UK, there are so many clubs and societies ranging from common things like sports and academic stuff to gaming and quidditch.

9. The schools offer a general childcare extracurricular activity for children up to age 12.

   At upper secondary school and university all such activates where run only by the pupils or students and were mainly focused on plays and other cultural activities. The student organisations runs nightclubs for students as the main source of income.

   The university still have a fencing master though.

   Sports (and other extracurricular activates) is generally done outside of school in the regular clubs which are not for profit run by the members. I don’t exactly know how it works with the football and hockey clubs that have professional players in the adult teams.

10. My university offered some sports clubs and research clubs, but none of those were popular.

    In schools there are some clubs based on specific subjects or other ones, but it depends on the school. In my high school there was almost nothing to choose from.

11. A university is not considered a school here, it’s vastly different. Universities offer many different sports for a rather small fee. Schools don’t offer anything. At least that’s how it was back in my day. Advantage: Kids get to have a life outside school. I’m a firm believer that children can’t develop properly when they spend most of their time, even their free time under constant supervision. Disadvantage: Clubs might be more expensive and poor families sometimes can’t afford membership/won’t send their kids there for other reasons (don’t care about them/it’s a girl and they are muslim/…). Mandatory afternoon activities with a variety to choose from are probably better in that case.

12. Oh yes, absolutely. It’s called “desporto escolar” and a lot of our olympic athletes started there. Two examples are Patrícia Mamona (triple jump) and Jorge Fonseca (judo). They started practicing those sports in “desporto escolar” and have won medals in the olympics. This is available until 12th grade. In Uni you have sports leagues between schools (law vs psychology for instance). The most played and watched here in Lisbon being rugby, football and volleyball.

13. My school offered some extracurricular activities from October/November to May.

    We had the European Computer Driving License course, English and French with a native speaker lecturer focused on B1 and B2 level exams. It was in 2003-2008. Other courses, like first aid, peace education, creative writing…were offered, but not consistently.

    I think we don’t have a right mindset to accept sport leagues at school. You have your two PE hours per week and then you practice sports in private gyms.

14. Sport clubs are private clubs independent of schools, esentially they are the kids, junior branches of your local pro or amateur sport teams. Some might cooperate with schools but most of the time kids will just join and play for them and have training after school. Most schools in Austria end around 13:00 or 14:00, so afternoons are shared between homework and sports/other activities like music schools (which are a rather big thing with most municipalities offering one). Kids might also join clubs like scouts.