This is StoryQuest. Today's story is sports monster.

Sports Day. Two words guaranteed to fill Toby Jenkins with dread.

Every year it was the same.

The whole school marched out onto the field in shiny white PE kits that made everyone look like rejected tennis players.

Each schoolhouse put on different coloured sashes

and parents lied the track with picnic chairs and family-sized bags of crisps.

Teachers blew whistles like their lives

depended on it. And then there was Toby. He wasn't just bad at sport. He was spectacularly,

record-breakingly hopeless. He once tripped during the beanbag balance and wiped out three year ones like bowling pins.

In the sack race, he'd hopped backwards and ended up in the ice cream van queue.

Even his mum said, oh, just clap for the others, love. They're still important.

So on Sports Day morning, Toby trudged to the starting line like a

prisoner being marched to the gallows. The first event was the 100-meter sprint. Toby stood in his lane,

heart hammering, already imagining himself coming last. Then he spotted it, something glinting in the grass.

A little pendant, shaped like a trainer, with a lightning bolt etched down the side. Toby picked it up.

Zap! A fizz shot through his body like he'd just drunk a litre of lemonade. His teeth

chatted. His knees wobbled. On your marks! Get set! yelled Mr Barker, the P.E. teacher.

Toby slipped the charm into his pocket. Go! Toby didn't run. He transformed. One second he was a weedy year six. The next, he was 12 feet

tall, covered in green fur, with enormous muscles bulging out of his PE kit like exploding

balloons. His trainers grew spikes, his arms stretched like windmills, and his head sprouted two comedy horns shaped like cricket bats.

Ah, sports monster!

He roared, then immediately belched, which made three year threes giggle hysterically.

...