Thrive Tribe’s First Virtual Sports Day

It’s rare to find an organisation that wants the absolute best for its employees, but Thrive Tribe does it every day. Once a year, the entire organisation comes together to celebrate the active, healthy lifestyles we promote by setting staff the challenge of competing in a sports day. This is a whole day of games and contests for all employees.
However, this year everyone has had to do pretty much everything a little differently to usual and so sports day, for the first time in Thrive Tribe’s history, would be held virtually. How did we pull it off? Read on to find out!…

Ten teams were assigned a colour and participants who met up on social media to discuss strategies. Despite being scattered around the country, technology means that we can stay in touch with our counterparts in other services. This makes for some excellent partnerships and new friends! Our teams were soon sharing photos of their dogs, not just ideas for team outfits!
The big day arrived, we all joined a huge video call with our various silly outfits. Around 200 staff from all Thrive Tribe organisations joined together in fancy dress. There were wigs, balloons, glitter, face paint, masks, colourful t-shirts and smiling faces across the screen as each team were introduced, and we were told what the various challenges would be. Before the day, each of the teams had entered a promo video based on their team colour- these creative and crazy videos set the scene for some friendly competition.
First up was a 5k run, a 10k bike ride and a selfie scavenger hunt. We all manically set off from our homes to take snaps of ourselves, excitedly rushing about our various towns and villages trying to find a pink front door, swans, a religious building and a plant nobody had heard of. We also filmed ourselves doing press-ups and jumping jacks and were challenged to make the highest card tower and run or walk our initials on a GPS tracking app.
In the afternoon, we had a cha-cha-cha dance lesson from a professional, which prompted lots of laughter. The wonderfully talented Matthew Day joined us all the way from Japan to teach us some great moves. It’s fair to say not many of us were as quick-footed as we needed to be to keep up with Matthew’s skills, but it was great fun and good exercise. One brave soul from each team entered the dance-off, with the rest of us less courageous team members cheering them on.
Lastly, we collected team miles by walking or running a mile each, ran around in our gardens doing an egg-and-spoon type challenge and typed as fast as we could to win speed points. There was an activity suitable for everybody, so it was a real team effort. I won’t mention which team won as it didn’t matter (okay, so maybe I feel like we were robbed of first place, but we were still on the podium).
It was such a good day with only a few little technical hitches, which with 200 people on a virtual meeting platform is pretty good going. Every person got involved, and we got to know each other a little better within a fun environment.

Want to host your own sports day with your friends, family, neighbours or colleagues? Here’s how to do that:
Invite your loved ones to take part and mix your teams by ability. You’ll need a range of activities to get everyone active safely. Video calling technology is ideal for matching up your teams regardless of where they live. Everyone can then plan for the big day. Encourage the use of silly outfits and team colours for some lovely family photos.
You may not have access to a professional for the dance-off, but get the kids to make up a fun routine, and they can judge all contestants. For egg-and-spoon style challenges, you can use whichever household items are available. Perhaps the goal is to throw balled-up socks into an empty bucket, or maybe you’d rather see who can do the most laps around the garden or the local park with a bag of pasta on their head. There’s plenty of ideas available at https://www.facebook.com/somsersethealthchecks/
Selfie scavenger hunts are a great way to keep the whole family active in the summer holidays, whether part of your sports day or as a separate activity. You’ll need to make a list of things you think your friends and family could find within walking or cycling distance from their homes, set a time limit and get everybody to send in their selfies- great fun!