Boccia and Kurling Festival - exhausting! - News - Harlow SSP

Boccia and Kurling Festival - exhausting!

Firstly thanks to all the school staff for their unbelievable support and efforts during what was a very exhausting and (at times) stressful day at Mark Hall Sports Centre. As with every event we organise the idea is to develop and expand each competition, increasing participation without detract from the children’s enjoyment – on reflection whilst we definitely achieved this, there will need to be some changes to this event for next year. 

Those of you that entered both events – morning and afternoon- will have seen a vast improvement in the festival in the pm session. It definitely works better with groups of 4. Going forward, I think it will be necessary to insist that schools bring an adult per team to events which are designed to be more inclusive. In order for the children to experience playing other schools, teams from the same school are often put in different groups, which can be very difficult to manage, especially if members of school staff aren’t used to attending events. Schools attending need to ensure that they are able to stay for the duration of the event unless prior arrangement has been made; re-pooling can be a nightmare if teams disappear before the scheduled end – I appreciate transportation can be an issue and am happy to work with any school, with some notice.

Results of the morning festival were very difficult to gauge, as not all teams received the same amount of time on either the boccia or the kurling; though the children didn’t seem to notice and clearly enjoyed themselves.

During the morning we had 20 teams:

Pemberley Academy x 3

Cooks Spinney x 4

Tanys Dell x 2

Pear Tree Mead x 3

William Martin

St Albans

St Lukes

Church Langley x 2

Little Parndon x 2

Freshwaters

 

During the afternoon, despite having more teams, the event ran better. The timetables were clearer, pitch numbers matched the sheets (my bad!) and it was easy having no team ‘resting’. This was definitely the way forward. Next year, we can either start slightly earlier or reduce the time given over to demonstrating the games – something to think about.

Afternoon we had 24 teams taking part:

Holy Cross

Little Parndon x 2

Freshwaters

Pemberley Academy x 2

Tanys Dell x 2

Pear Tree Mead x 3

William Martin

St Albans

St Lukes

Hatfield Heath x 2

Cooks Spinney x 4

Church Langley x 4

 

Boccia Winners were:

1 – Little Parndon A; Runners Up – St Albans B

2 – Holy Cross; Runners Up - Pear Tree Mead A

Kurling Winners were:

1 – Cooks Spinney D; Runners Up – Church Langley A

2 – Freshwaters; Runners Up – Church Langley D

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