Page 79 - Olympism in Socialism

committee to win over everybody to extra-
curricular sports. They organise their own
competitions between forms and also school
championships. Furthermore, their programme
includes the building of a small sports ground
within the school premises, the training of
instructors, the sending of participants to all
district competitions, and the organization of
receptions for the best sportsmen.
Such receptions are a special highlight for the
girls and boys. In a festival ceremony the best
sportsmen of the school are awarded the specially
designed certificate “Best Sportsmen of the Ernst
Thaelmann School”; they also receive gifts of
books from the principal. Several times the sports
teacher has organised such functions at other
places, for instance, the Sports Club Dynamo in
Berlin, where Olympic medal winners have
handed over the certificates and talked to the
happy youngsters of Belzig about their experience
and also about the fact that it requires a lot of
energy, strong will-power and enormous diligence
to become a top sportsman.
At the last reception they were able to strike
the following balance: out of the 750 pupils of the
school 721 participated in the competitions of the
Children’s and Youth Spartakiad. On an average,
every pupil in addition took part in four
competitions like the “Small Peace Cycle Race” or
cross-country races. Altogether, 87 per cent of all
girls and boys regularly participate in
extracurricular sports activities.
The Ernst Thaelmann School was recently
awarded a certificate and a bonus by the Council
of the State as the best school in the country of
Potsdam in extra-curricular sports.
It goes without saying that students will also
go in for sports later on when they become

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