Chase Your Dreams: Inside Our Sports Celebration Evening

Dreams don't start on the podium. They start the moment a girl decides to try. Last week we watched that decision play out in a room full of trophies and proud parents at St George's annual Sports Celebration Evening.

This year's theme, Chase Your Dreams, felt more urgent than usual. New research from Women in Sport shows that girls' dream rates in sport have fallen to their lowest level on record. Not the number of girls achieving greatness, but the number who dare to imagine it in the first place. That statistic set the tone for the whole evening.

We were joined by two-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist Sarah Adlington, the first judoka in history to win gold at two Commonwealth Games, who spoke to our girls and parents about resilience, effort, and reaching for potential rather than perfection. Reflecting afterwards, Sarah put it simply: as one of the only all-girls schools in the country, St George's has created a space where girls have the freedom and confidence to compete and play sport and it's working, with participation rates to prove it.

That's really the heart of it. Research from EY and espnW found that 94% of women in C-suite roles played sport growing up, and most credit it directly with shaping their leadership. That's not a coincidence, it's what happens when girls are given room to lead, compete, struggle and grow without an audience waiting for them to get it wrong.

It's also why we're proud that every single pupil at St George's takes part in PE, not just our county players and squad captains. Confidence doesn't only get built on a podium. It gets built the week a girl who's never picked up a racket turns up to pickleball club anyway.

On the night, we celebrated:

• Our record-breakers and representative athletes, competing at county, national and international level

• Team players who show up, week in, week out, rain or shine

• Every girl who tried something new this year - dance, spin, ultimate frisbee, lifeguarding and beyond

Congratulations to every athlete, coach and family who made the evening one to remember. Here's to a school full of girls brave enough to dream big.