Oakwood Junior School children are kicking off the new term celebrating their football wins.
The school in Holbrook Road, part of Odyssey Collaborative Trust, hosted its first football tournament in aid of Derby County Community Trust’s Kenya Appeal while the girls’ football team won its league for the third year in a row.
Head of PE, Joshua Seaman, said: “It has been a great end to the first term with a real buzz about the school for the football tournament and great sense of community, as well as pride in our school teams.”
The school football tournament was organised as part of the Monster Kick About week run by Sports Direct with Nike and backed by football stars such as John Stones and Lucy Bronze.
The entire curriculum throughout the week took on a footballing theme as part of the scheme to get everyone involved in football as much as possible.
Mr Seaman said: “While all subjects from Maths to Geography had a footballing element, it also felt the perfect opportunity to run a charity event around foobtall. We have a good relationship with Derby County Community Trust so decided to raise funds for their Rams in Kenya appeal where they visit Kenya to improve the life for children in the project’s partner schools.”
The tournament was open to any pupil, regardless of whether they had played any football before.
The school collected donations of old football kits and bibs so that the 110 children who put their names forward could play.
In total, eight teams were formed and were totally mixed in terms of age, ability and gender.
Mr Seaman said: “At first we 30 or 40 children interested and I thought that was a good number, but as the days went on more and more children were adding their names and in the end it was much bigger than we expected. We had to reduce the size of the pitches slightly to accommodate all the teams!”
Parents and carers were able to watch while staff all took on roles from team managers to referees. In total the event raised £850 for DCCT.
Mr Seaman said the day achieved the aim of getting more people interested in football.
“It was great to see so many Year 3 children taking part who said they had never touched a football before and lots of girls got involved throughout the week.”
Meanwhile, the school’s girls’ football team, made up of Year 5 and 6 children, carried on the footballing success when they won their league – the third time in a row.
In June this year, the team represented Derby County in the Premier Leage Primary Stars National Girls Football Tournament at Brentford. Now, with several of those pupils having moved on to secondary school and the team welcoming new Year 5 pupils, it has continued its success.
Mr Seaman said: “The popularity in girls’ football has certainly increased over the past few years and we are seeing the quality of the teams in the league really improving too so it is brilliant that our girls have done so well again.”
Headteacher CT Atwal said: “We are fortunate to have such a passionate group of staff championing sport at Oakwood Junior School. Mr Seaman and the staff did a wonderful job organising the football tournament and it was wonderful to see parents and the community come out in such good numbers to support it.”
This story was written by Kirsty Green of Penguin PR on behalf of Odyssey Collaborative Trust. If you would like support with your PR, get in touch!
