Primary Schools' Hockey Festival - Saturday 5th December
The rain held off just long enough and on Saturday the 5th of December 176 primary school children from 9 schools descended upon the Astro-turfs at Dauntsey's. The Dauntsey's Sports Outreach Programme, which is now in its sixth year, has seen some enjoyable festivals, but none so exciting as Saturdays. Shane Cloete, William Whyte and the Dauntsey's sports staff have continued to take sport into the community and spent the majority of this term making hour long visits to the schools helping to develop the hockey skills of the 320 pupils who attend the sessions.
The culmination of all the coaching sessions is "The Primary Schools Mini-Hockey Festival". This festival of hockey enabled all the children to participate in a team event, while affording them the opportunity to show off their skills and talent in an atmosphere of friendly rivalry. The spectators and supporters were entertained by some outstanding hockey with over 115 goals being scored in the 42 games played. Each year the skills level of the players seems to increase and this year was no different, with some highly competitive matches being played in both divisions. The festival was split into two divisions, each with two pools and after all the fun and hard work, two teams from each division competed in the finals.
Both finals were nail bitters with the A division final having to go to extra time and then golden goal. The entire morning was a huge success with all the players enjoying the good spirit and atmosphere, which prevailed. Medals were awarded to both the winners and runners up in each division and the Sports Outreach Trophy went to the overall festival winners; St Joseph's Primary School, Devizes. The A Division was won by the St Joseph's Slytherins with the Urchfont Gryfindors ending as runners up; while the B Division was won by the St Joseph's Seekers with runners up Rowde Ravenclaws. The sports outreach programme continues next term with the main emphasis being football and rugby.
Participating Schools
- All Cannings Primary School - All Canning
- Dauntsey's Aided primary School - West Lavington
- Five Lanes Primary School - Worton
- Holy Trinity Primary School - Great Cheveral
- Rowde Primary School - Rowde
- Seend Primary School - Seend
- St Barnabas Primary Schools - Market Lavington
- St Josephs Primary Schools - Devizes
- Urchfont Primary School - Urchfont