Sportdag Epe - Friends and neighbors
On Thursday, June 28, 2018, the Sportdag Epe took place in and outside the sports halls at the Gasstraße in bright sunshine. A total of 180 students from the Euregio Comprehensive School and the TalentStad Beroepscollege from Zwolle (NL) tested team skills, endurance and dexterity at 12 different stations.
In 24 mixed teams of German and Dutch students, two teams each played at one station for the day's victory by moving from station to station and scoring points. While the stations prepared by the German colleagues were mainly about sports competitions such as field hockey, basketball or table tennis, the Dutch stations mainly required teamwork and strategic thinking. Due to the focus on the sporting challenge, the language barrier receded completely into the background: the students communicated through a mix of German, Dutch and English, asking each other about their everyday lives and even organizing a soccer game on their own during the barbecue break.
The sports festival fully fulfilled its purpose of achieving common goals and learning from each other in a playful way. The organizers were accordingly very satisfied with the result of the first sports day and are now looking forward to the following projects that will emerge from the partnership Epe-Zwolle.
The idea for the first-ever sports festival was formulated back in 2017, when representatives of the Euregio Comprehensive School and TalentStad agreed on a strategic school partnership. This partnership became official in February 2018 with the signing of a joint "Memorandum of Understanding". Since then, planning for the sports festival has been driven forward in close cooperation between the German and Dutch colleagues and realized with the help and support of the INTERREG V A program Germany-Nederland and the European Union (EU).