Harrison's - Story
I’m doing the Get on Track programme as part of my course at college. I’m doing a Level 3 course in Uniformed Public Services, which basically trains us for future jobs in the Army or Navy or similar. I want to join the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers corps when I finish college.
We started the programme with the Trust back in late November 2020 and because of the situation at the time, we did everything virtually at first. At that time I wasn’t doing a lot of stuff or any activity at all really outside of college.
Normally I prefer doing stuff in what I’d call ‘real life’, but I found that doing things virtually helped me. For example, we did an exercise where we looked at a 24 hour clock of our day which I found really useful. It made us think about what time you did stuff and how much time you spent on doing things. It made me really think about the time I went to bed and when I would be getting up and I made some changes there which really helped with my sleeping pattern.
In March when the restrictions eased, I met up with our athlete mentor Paul for the first time. He’s got us doing loads of stuff like rugby, football, rounders, loads of other types of physical exercise too… I think my favourite activities were rounders and football.
“Harrison initially didn’t have the confidence to lead but as the programme has progressed, he’s stepped up into that leadership role. He’s an impressive young man who has ambitions to go on and do something special in his life. ”
Paul Broadbent, athlete mentor
It’s been really great working with Paul, he’s always helping us out. I’ve learned more about becoming a leader, I’m more confident about standing up in front of other people and leading a group of people to do a task, through this programme I feel like I’ve definitely become a better leader.
I feel like I’ve challenged myself loads on this programme. We did exercises at the start like the Jenga block exercise that helped with team building and also forced us to get better at communicating with other team members but also included an element of competition.
I do feel like I’ve learned lots of skills over the last six or seven months. In particular I’d say my communication skills and problem-solving skills are better and I’m definitely more confident than I used to be as well. In terms of activity, I’ve been going out running more regularly, going out twice a week and I’ve also started going to the gym now that we’ve come out of lockdown.
I’d totally recommend the Get on Track programme to other people. I wasn’t that active previously and didn’t communicate much with people but I’m way more active now and much more confident in talking to other people.
Harrison attended the Get on Track for Wellbeing programme while studying at Grimsby College and in partnership with VANEL. Thanks to funding from Sport England, we are working with 700 young people in coastal communities all across England to help them become more active.