Its 6pm. A quiet Wednesday evening at the Lycée Bel-Val. A place where all day, thousands of students are rushing from classroom to classroom, but all the eye can see now is some cleaning staff and some adults roaming through the building as its parents’ evening.
However, sneaking a peek into the Lycée’s cellar, the team at ‘Iron Sparks’ are training as per usual, every week, from Mondays to Saturdays. Iron Sparks is a non-profit fitness group always on the search for like-minded people. RTL Lëtzebuerg’s Christophe Hochard asked to meet the two founders of the group: Mandy Loes (33 years old) and Sybille Blitgen (41 years old). Working together through thick and thin, Mandy and Sybille founded the club more than three years ago.
Laurent is Sybille’s brother. The young man has Down syndrome, a genetic condition where a person is born with an extra copy of chromosome 21. “My goal was always to find a sport’s community where Laurent won’t feel pushed into a corner,” Sybille shared in her interview with RTL. And this is how Iron Sparks was born.
The core tenet at Iron Sparks is that ‘everyone is equal.’ Every human being with or without a disability deserves to be a part of society. The club works on tailoring their training programmes and making them as inclusive as possible for anyone who wants to take part. Mandy explained that the club wants to provide a space for people to ‘train together, and experience something together.’ Mandy herself was a high performance athlete several years ago. Mandy was a licensed gymnast and was even part of the national team. “Sports are a huge passion of mine,” the vice president of Iron Sparks shared. " We presented our project to the school and proposed to make the concept a part of the official teaching programme.” And the idea worked.
Mandy’s second passion is the English language. After her final year at the Lycée de garçons d’Esch-sur-Alzette in 2011, she studied in Birmingham. Since 2015, Mandy has been working as a teacher at Lycée Guillaume Kroll in Esch. “Despite both schools Guillaume Kroll and Lycée Bel-Val not working together, I try to get my students at Guillaume Kroll involved in this project too,” Mandy shared.
Sybille Blitgen shares this passion for English. After her final year in high school in 2002, she went on to study at the University College of North Wales. Today, Sybille has been teaching English at the Lycée Bel-Val for 13 years. The 41-year-old woman is incredibly happy with the school: “The school cares deeply for its students, helping kids with learning difficulties and special needs.”
The team meets six days a week. They train together, joke around, laugh together, and much more. The team is equally made up of able-bodied people and people with special needs.
“They experience inclusion together,” Sybille said in the interview. “Everyone should be subjected to the same conditions at any given time. In a normal setting, these people would never have come together, would never have become friends. We have managed to get people out of their homes and bring them all together.” This social aspect plays a huge role in their project. Alongside teaching English, Sybille also teaches sports lessons at the Lycée Bel-Val.
‘Iron Sparks’ has now been around for three and a half years, but the two ladies seem to be as excited as ever by their project, even considering expanding beyond Belval. “It would be truly incredible if we could spread this idea of inclusion beyond Esch. In other parts of the country, we could have similar groups where people come together and stay fit at their own pace. We really believe this is feasible,” Sybille said. The goal now is to raise awareness among municipalities about this project and bring them along on our journey of more inclusion in sports.
The team is also searching for a new location. Since ‘Iron Sparks’ was founded, they have been based at Lycée Bel-Val. However, the space is becoming increasingly limited. During winter, training often cannot take place because the temperature makes outdoor sessions impossible. There is also not enough space to properly store all the equipment.
“We would be delighted to find a new home,” Sybille and Mandy said, preferably even before the new year
Five days a week, from Mondays until Fridays training takes place from 5.45pm onwards in Belval. On Saturday, however, training starts in the morning from 10 until 11am.
More information about ‘Iron Sparks’ can be found on their website www.ironsparks.com or you can follow them on instagram (@iron_sparks_luxembourg).
