To celebrate the opening of Leyton Sixth Form College, a 'Festival Week' was designed. The LSC Festival Week ran through from Monday 11^th to Sunday 17^th July 1988 as a celebration of the new sixth form college status. This celebration of the start of LSC had something of an ‘Olympic Spirit’ to it with regard to its mixture of sporting and cultural events. It was also a unifying event in that it embraced many staff and students from the grammar school days, many from the comprehensive school days and others from the new ‘6^th form’ era, which had already commenced. A number of ‘famous’ alumni attended; Derek Jakobi, Jonathan Ross, Frank Muir and John Lill were all involved in cultural activities, whilst sporting alumni Les Sealey and Perry Suckling were also involved in the sporting events.

Rather nostalgically the sports day was the last one held on site for our own students, although a number of local schools have held their sports days here in subsequent years. The greater part of the day was given over to a cricket competition that involved a team of LSC students and teams from two local clubs; a close final between Walthamstow and West Essex was won by Walthamstow. As the cricket concluded, we immediately moved on to the football competition which again included a team of LSC students who were competing with a team from Leyton Old Boys FC, a Perry Suckling team (including Sealey) and teams representing Leyton Orient and Spurs, with the 'Old Boys coming out on top.

The final sporting event of the week took place on the Sunday and was the first (and only) LSC Half-marathon. Despite there being quite a small field of runners, the event was well supported by LSC staff and LCOB FC, and there was an assortment of local club runners who added a ‘touch of class’ to the event. The first LSC runner home was a Mr C Price (1hr 31mins) our current Vice Principal. Once the race was done a large crowd were left to enjoy the entertainment, fun and games and hospitality that formed the 'Grand Fayre'.

Now that Leyton Sixth Form College was ‘up and running’ it was important to get to work within the new parameters that pertained. One positive was that the sports hall was now bigger because of building changes needed for the new circumstances. The original sports hall had been built in 1970/71 as a ‘two court’ (badminton) facility and like similar ones constructed at SGM and Chingford Senior High Schools was due for extension to double the size within 10 years. That never happened, sadly, and even when expanded in 1988/9 was only to approximately ¾ of the original projected size, but it was a welcomed development nonetheless. It was not all gain, however, as the lovely ‘old gym’ (ropes/beams and all) was lost. Currently that space is occupied by Eat 10. In addition, the PE Department now became the Sports Department and consisted of just one person. That was not actually the intention but attempts to appoint a female member of staff proved difficult and unsuccessful.

All of these changes did not prove too much of a problem and by October 1989 the newly formed LSC netball team was in action at the Waltham Forest schools/colleges rally held at Salisbury Hall playing fields in Walthamstow. The courts played on are now sadly covered by a Sainsbury’s supermarket. A couple of months later, the girls and boys cross country teams were in action at the W.F. cross country championships at the Lea Valley Cycle Track in Leyton. This terrific facility of one mile of undulating road surface (built in 1975 on a former refuse dump) had for many years been a popular and well used cycling facility for the local schools programmes as well as invaluable for local cycle club and national events. It also became a good venue for running training and eventually (by making use of the grassed and shrubby areas within and outside of the track) as a cross country course too. The track is no more as from 2006 it was subsumed into the Queen Elizabeth Park in preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games.

From a very early stage a Friday after college mixed recreational badminton session became immensely popular with regular attendances of between 30-40 students. With such good numbers, raising a mixed team posed few problems. This badminton session continued over many years and in the summer months it ran at the same time as ‘recreational’ cricket matches against local schools and colleges which were possible because the college was fortunate to have an all-weather cricket wicket on site. Friday evening was certainly put to good use for sport at LSC.

Volleyball had also become a hugely popular sport in the school through the 1980’s and this continued in the college and right through to the present day. LSC had already become provider of the Waltham Forest boys team for London Youth Games (LYG) and this soon became the case for the girls team as well. Successes were many at the LYG and at the Essex Junior Volleyball Tournament (JUVO) and the college teams started to compete in national teams and provided many players for the London teams competing annually in the Inter-Regional Championships. The photo on the right shows the boys at the July 1989 event where they became Essex Champions.

Soon there were also girls basketball and football teams in action and photos on the right show the earliest teams for both.