English Schools 2025: The importance of the team behind the athletes

Last week, some of the best young athletes from across the country travelled to Alexander Stadium, Birmingham to compete in the 2025 English School Track and Field Championships. It was great to see up and coming young athletes performing at their best with lots of new championship best performances set.

To enable the athletes to perform at their best, each team has a handful of Team Managers available to support the athletes. We caught up with one Team Manager who had been to English Schools many times before and a Team Physio who was there for the first time to discover more about their experiences of the event.

Julia Wczasek, Team Manager for the West Midlands, has been to English Schools before, but described some changes made in recent years that have improved the event experience. These improvements included the athletes village stand at Alexander Stadium, a WhatsApp broadcast group to improve communications with officials and the screens showing the schedule and results. The more readily available up-to-date information provided has made it easier for her to focus on each athlete and their preparations for their event.

For Will, Team Physio for Hertfordshire, it was his first experience of this competition, but he describes how impressed he was by the scale of the event.

“My first experience here is great actually. I was really surprised with the venue, it’s huge. All the athletes are inspiring because they’re quite young and obviously they’re way better than me at all of this, so it’s inspiring to watch.”

Helping athletes to prepare properly

Preparation is the key to success, so Julia described how the West Midlands have a team meeting the night before English Schools to go through the important things.

“We had a team meeting last night to check everyone is there and to check all their kit because we don’t really like to do it on the day. We handed out their room numbers and their bib numbers as well. Then we double-checked pins, that’s massively important and we showed them how to put their pins on.

“This morning they’re all down to breakfast together whether they are competing today or not, so that’s a seven o’clock start. And you go round and check that they’re eating properly and go through their race plan. Throughout the day we check their nutrition and their hydration, especially today. We check how they’re feeling. Today I’ve been saying to them it’s time to get a shade break.”

Helping athletes to overcome challenges

For many athletes, English Schools will be the first event of this scale they have competed in. That means lots of things are new, so the Team Managers are there to talk them through it and help make their competition day as straightforward as possible.

“Every minute I think we ask, ‘what’s your call up time?’ It’s the most important thing but it’s a massive learning thing because they’ve never done a call up time. For a lot of them it’s their first time, so we talk individually to each person about how, where and when they need to warm up. Some say they need ten hours to warm up and you have to explain they won’t have that on the warm up track and work out a solution for where else they can warm up.”

“We’ve had challenges today for what you can take into the warm up area and what you can’t take out of the warm up area. So, I’ve got a new name for myself, I’m now ‘West Midlands bag lady’, so I just walk in and out with bags.”

Once the athletes have competed, some will be happy with their performances whilst others will be disappointed, so this is where the team is particularly important.

“We just encourage them to do their best and go for a PB. If they don’t get that, then we discuss what’s happened with them first and we see how they’re feeling. We say, ‘highs together but also lows together’, we are in it together as a team so that’s important.”

Following his positive first experience of the English, Will said he would be happy to be part of the event again.

“For me as a physio, I wanted to go into paediatrics. My background is in rugby, so I wanted to get some experience in athletics. I would definitely come back again, it’s a great event and great exposure to the kids.”