The athlete enrichment programme for the School Games National Finals 2026 has been developed by Youth Sport Trust’s Senior Athlete Mentor Rachael MacKenzie and builds on the findings of the Wired to Win playbook, developed following the 2024 Games. This programme and research aim to deepen the collective understanding of how today’s aspiring athletes navigate sport and life.

Wired to Win found that when competition becomes defined solely by results, rankings or winning, the benefits that can be gained through participation, such as skill development, resilience and belonging, can be overshadowed by pressure, anxiety and fear of failure. That’s why this year’s enrichment programme is centred around creating psychologically safe competition environments, where young people feel supported to perform, learn and grow.

Read more about psychologically safe competition environments here.

Supporting the Whole Athlete

The report also highlighted that every athlete is simultaneously three people: a teenager, an athlete and a performer. Each personality requires different support. Teenagers need emotional understanding room for normal adolescent experiences, the performer needs preparation and strategies for handling pressure, and the athlete needs physical development guidance.

Modern support networks around young athletes can be complicated, with parents often taking on coaching responsibilities and coaches becoming mentors, and when multiple well-meaning people are offering conflicting advice and guidance these overlapping roles can sometimes cause confusion and increase pressure rather than reduce it.

Additionally, whilst awareness of the importance of mental health continues to grow, the research showed that many athletes lack practical strategies to manage this and handle pressure within sporting environments.

The real challenge is not simply making support available to young people, but recognising what type of support is needed, and which part of the young person’s identity requires it, at any given moment.

School Games National Finals 2026 will work to create an environment that recognises this complexity and educate athletes’ networks to recognise and support these differing needs as well.

Mentoring at the Games

The Wired to Win report found that many athletes felt that meeting an elite athlete, attending a high-performance environment or receiving guidance from a trusted mentor was a defining moment in their sporting journeys that made success feel achievable. Yet access to such opportunities is not equal. Geography, financial constraints and social connections often determine who gets to experience them.

School Games National Finals 2026 is working to ensure more opportunities are created for young people from more diverse pathways and backgrounds can attend and experience a major multi-sport event. Furthermore, all participating athletes will benefit from opportunities to connect with professional athlete mentors, ensuring every young person can see what is possible and feel that excellence – both within and beyond the competition – is within reach.

Mentoring at the Games will focus on creating space for feedback, reflection and meaningful conversation, either in small groups or through one-to-one sessions. Support will be personalised and responsive to what young people need in the moment, recognising the stronger impact it will have by making it relevant to each athlete’s experience, including the events they have taken part in, the results they have achieved and the challenges or opportunities they are facing there and then.

Mentors will support athletes to:

• reflect on both personal and performance-related development
• set goals that feel meaningful and personal to them
• connect short-term objectives with longer-term ambitions, including elite or Olympic-level aspirations where relevant
• identify the processes, habits and practical steps needed to work towards those goals