NORTH Ayrshire Active Schools is starting the search for star pupils to join their Sports Academy.

The year-long leadership education and training programme offers spaces for up to 60 young people across secondary schools in North Ayrshire.

Run by North Ayrshire Active Schools, the Academy offers training, mentoring, qualifications as well as the chance to take up volunteering opportunities during the year.

Leeanne McPhail of North Ayrshire Active Schools explained: “The Sports Academy provides training, mentoring, qualifications and volunteering experience for up to 60 young people from S5 and S6 across North Ayrshire.

“Throughout the year the pupils benefit from gaining transferable skills such a confidence, communication, leadership, organisation and time keeping.”

Active School is run by sportscotland and works in partnership with all 32 local authorities to invest in and support the Active Schools Network.

The network consists of over 400 managers and coordinators dedicated to developing and supporting the delivery of quality sporting opportunities for children and young people.

Throughout the school year the team is busy keeping pupils active and fit and lockdown didn’t stop them from achieving that.

They tasked primary and secondary pupils around North Ayrshire with walking at least 10,000 steps a day.

And the pupils were joined on the virtual challenge by teachers and their families who walked thousands of steps. some clocking up hundreds of thousand over the weeks.

A leaderboard was created and the teams would post their weekly step counts on social media to see who had walked the furthest.

Leeanne went on: “The team always keep the young people active.”