The principal of Dawah Ummah High School on 17th Street, Sinkor, Monrovia Mr. Ishmailla A. Sheriff says honesty, teamwork, fair play, and respect for others are benefits for playing sports.
Speaking at a program making the 3rd anniversary of the school’s separate sports team called the Yellow House, at the campus of the Muslim Congress High School on Mechlin Street, Wednesday he said physical education is vital to the holistic development of young people, fostering their physical, social and emotional health.
“The benefits of sports reach beyond the impact on the physical well-being of athletes and their value cannot be underestimated,” he said.
Principal Sheriff said one of the essential components of quality education is sports and said sport programs do not just promote physical activity, but also correlate to improve academic performance under specific conditions.
Sports, he said can also, under right conditions, provide health options to deviant behaviors such as drug abuse, violence and crime.
“Physical education and sports have an educational impact and this shows the positive relationship between involving in physical activity and psychosocial development,” Mr. Sheriff told the students.
He noted that these learning aspects highlight the impact on physical education in terms of the physical and health aspects of a child and his development. He noted that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that focuses mostly on the positive effects of sports on the physical health, growth and development of athletes.
He went further to narrate that physical education and sport also build good healthy habits that encourage lifelong participation in physical activities.
“This extends the impact of physical education beyond the school and highlights the potential impact of physical education on public health,” he said.
Principal Sheriff then encouraged the students and the administration of the school to expand its sports programs with extensive focus on the development of technical skills.
He called on the secretariat and school board to compliment the endeavor of the administration as the case may be.
He noted that “the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is now using sports and play programmes to encourage young people, particularly girls and young women to attend school within the refugee camp across the world.”
UNICEF, he said, has a strong focus on using sports to campaign for girls’ education as well as promoting education through events and awareness campaigns.
Sports based programs; Mr. Sheriff told the students, have been proven to improve the learning performances of children and young people, encouraging school attendance and the desire to succeed academically, whilst majority research into the health and development impacts of sports has been conducted in developed countries.
Meanwhile, the programme was characterized with the presentation the house king queen and other colorful performance by the students.