Ysgol Glantaf praised for another year on the sports field
Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Glantaf has been praised again for a strong year on the sports field, with rugby, football, netball and athletics all carrying the Cardiff school through a crowded calendar. Staff say the point was not a single trophy. It was that teams kept turning out, week after week, in Welsh and in all weathers.
The school, a Welsh medium secondary in Llandaff North, has long treated sport as part of the same discipline as the classroom. That habit showed in the fixtures list. Younger year groups filled the lower pitches. Senior sides travelled across the city and the valleys without the usual mid season drop in numbers.
A full set of codes
Rugby and football took the winter. Netball and athletics took the spring. Cross country runners used the river paths along the Taff when the fields were too heavy. Teachers and volunteer coaches shared the evenings. Parents talk of a school that still expects pupils to represent Glantaf, not only to attend it.
Local clubs in Cardiff have noticed the benefit. Players arrive already used to training, travel and a team sheet. That matters in a capital where Saturday sport competes with part time work and the pull of the high street.
More than the scoreline
Praise from neighbouring schools has focused on the way Glantaf sides play as much as on results. Captains are expected to speak Welsh on the field. Fixtures are treated as visits, not raids. After matches the home table is still laid for the other team. It is an old courtesy, and it has not gone out of fashion on this side of the river.
The new term has already brought trials and a fresh set of year seven faces on the touchline. Staff say the aim is the same as last year: keep as many pupils in a kit as possible, keep the fields in use, and let the results look after themselves.
For a Welsh medium school in Cardiff, that is not a side story. It is how Glantaf shows itself to the city, one Saturday at a time.