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Sport

King David courts athleticism with new sports complex

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When Hersch Klaff offered to make a donation to King David High School Linksfield, Principal Lorraine Srage felt it was the school’s opportunity to introduce a special place for sport.

It culminated in the Klaff Family Sports Complex, opened on 17 September 2024, and named after Klaff, who matriculated at the school in 1970.

Srage wanted the complex to help take the school’s sports teams to greater heights and, more importantly, make sport accessible to all students.

“We had arrived at the point where we really needed to create an environment where students felt like they were athletes, that there was a place where they could go and train,” she said.

The complex includes a volleyball court, basketball court, netball court, and gym equipment such as weights, stationary bikes, and treadmills.

“We’ve always had a gym, but this was a vision of a complex where students could have a gym, they could play on an indoor volleyball court, an indoor netball court, a basketball court, an indoor tennis court, plus a tennis multi-purpose court outside. We also have two padel courts. We looked at the space holistically. We really wanted all students to be able to enjoy exercise, not just those who play sport.”

Srage said the complex made state-of-the-art equipment accessible to all students, including those who don’t have access to private gyms. “We want families to come and play on a Sunday, to really make the space a King David family environment. I guess my vision ultimately is that it would become a community centre. Maccabi could run out of here, Jewish children and their parents could come.”

The project was initiated when the King David Schools’ Foundation contacted Srage to inform her an alumnus was offering a donation, and asked her, “What would you like?”

She responded, “It’s time for something to do with sport.”

She was emboldened by her love for sport and the fact that between 2021 and 2023, the school built an arts, drama, and music centre, called the Yard, and an open space with a library for students to study, known as the Studios. The latter, she said, “facilitates our elective system because we have a maker’s room and all our CAT (Computer Applications Technology) classrooms are upstairs.

“With these two buildings in mind, when this particular donor said to the foundation, ‘Well, the principal must phone me and she must motivate what she wants,’ I was very lucky. I told him, ‘Look, there would be two things.’” One was enclosing the school’s swimming pool, and the other was the sports complex. She felt the latter needed to come first.

“There are many more children who play a range of sports other than just swimming,” Srage said. “I felt that if there was a sizeable amount of money going in, I would want the school to make possible the vision of a healthy all-round child, not just focused on academics or the cultural sphere.”

Because of this, there is also a physiotherapist at the complex and a dietician and biokineticist on call. The complex contains two ice baths, and a dance studio. A coffee shop is in the offing.

“Our sports offices are also there,” Srage says. “We have a boardroom and a broadcasting room.” The latter offers students a place to stream a game and commentate.

“Even if you can’t play rugby, you can come and work out in the gym,” says Srage, a four-time Comrades Marathon medallist and proud Manchester United supporter. “Anybody can play padel. Basketball is as big a thing at the school as netball and tennis.”

Srage, who describes the complex as “magnificent” and “absolutely beautiful”, envisions “parents, who bring their kids to sports or dancing in the afternoon sitting and having coffee, a sandwich, or whatever while their kids are having their lesson or playing a rugby match”.

She believes the complex gives sports a context. “If you play in an area where it looks professional, the sport is given a context. If you’re working in a gym that looks like a gym. It really creates motivation.”

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