On the 12th National Student Sports Meeting, the Shanghai Table-Tennis Team, whose members are all from Shanghai High School, won all the champions in the Table-Tennis games, including both boys' and girls' champions for single and group players.
Like any other SHS student, all the champions--Wang Shu, Yu Diyang, Wei Wensheng, Chi Yuanrui--are training, learning and living in this prestigious high school with more than 100 years' history. As an exploration of "combining sports and study" initiated by the municipal government, SHS established cooperation with the Table-tennis Club of East China University of Science and Technology in 1997, and with the joining of the badminton team, the SHS Table-tennis and Badminton (T&B) Center was established in 2008. The goal of this center is not only to win gold medals, what's more important is to cultivate a group of learned young athletes to represent the spirit of a school with profound history.
To study is the base as well as the challenge of "combining sports and study". In order to help them lay a solid foundation for their academic progress, the teachers in the T&B Center compiled new math textbook which reinforces their mathematical skills with a focus on game score mental calculation. In Chinese classes, writing after-game journals in second person allows them to talk to themselves in games. Complicated grammar points are gone in English lessons, replaced by overwhelming oral practices and table-tennis terminologies. Communication in international competitions is not a problem anymore.
"Let learners be athletic, and let athletes be learned." This is a motto in Shanghai's recent effort to combine sports and study. SHS's efficient administration and rich resources not only help the students become champions, but also make them prepared for academic development. In the past twenty years, Shanghai High School has cultivated more than 100 middle/high-level athletes for provincial teams, and has won more than 50 world champions in all kinds of national and international table-tennis competitions. Shanghai High School will continue to make breakthroughs on the way of "combining sports and study", and create a even brighter future.