Head of Community Darren Phillips’ monthly round-up of the community side of the club
With the new school year kicking-off in September, we’ve been extremely busy, with the annual Dartford primary school’s tournament taking up a lot of our efforts.
The tournament, open to all primary schools in Year 5 and 6 with girls and boys participating, took place across one week, with two days of group stages and a day of finals.
With 26 girls’ teams and 31 boys’ teams, over 570 students took part in this year’s tournament.
Teams were split into seven groups of around five teams with the winner of each group progressing to the finals.
Holy Trinity, Oakfield, West Hill, Wentworth, Langafel, Manor Community and Dartford Primary were the boys’ finalists. Sutton at Hone, Wentworth, Oakfield, Craylands, Crockenhill, Dartford Bridge and Stone St Mary’s were the girls’ finalists.
The final, which took place on September the 27th, saw the boys of Wentworth School and the girls of Dartford Bridge crowned champions of the tournament. Both teams will now move on to represent Dartford in the Kent school’s finals which should take place in January.
Some 35 schools were invited and 31 schools took part, a testament to the brilliant facilities available at our club and just one of 15 different competitions we host for the community.
It’s a long-standing event within the community, currently without us it just wouldn’t be able to take place.
We believe pupils need to get out of the classroom more and we help them improve their fitness and mental health and they can meet children from other schools who they may end up going to school with when they move up to secondary schools.
They also get a chance to play with children from their own school when usually they would just play with their club sides. There are, of course, also children who may not play for a team and this gives them a chance to play as well.
With so many students, teachers, parents and family members part of and attending this year’s tournament, we hope to see many of you at Princes Park in the coming weeks as the men’s and women’s seasons continue.
Across September, our coaches also helped to run PE classes at a secondary school, a scheme we ran on a 10-week trial last year and we really looking forward to continuing it this year.
Looking to November we aim to restart the Schools’ League and aim to get involved further with mental health charity, Head in The Game.
As told to Riley Finch
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