The boys under 16 team ran out 6-2 winners last night in the final of the South Notts Cup.
Goals from Elvis Otim, Colby Bishop, Martel Hamilton, Mason Coy, Jack Millward and Kamel Mantock ensured a comfortable victory over Eastwood Comprehensive School.
This was a fantastic way to finish their time at the school and myself and Mr Jones could not be prouder of the boys for their efforts and dedication to playing for school over the past 5 years.
Well done to you all!
The boys posing with the trophies and medals they have won this season.
The idea of taking the school teams on tour first came up well over a year ago but shortly after this we were informed that the school may be shut before we could get the trip planned. Once we had realised that the school had a future we resumed our plans and Holland 2012 began to take shape.
As many will know we organised a number of different events in order to raise money that would be used to contribute towards the cost of the trip. Julia Caunt of The Premier League was able to speak to a number of Professional Clubs on our behalf to ask them to donate prizes that we could raffle and auction off and pupils began to sell tickets in droves. The pupils gave up their own time to bag pack at our local Iceland Store to raise further money for this exciting trip. We were also very lucky when Geostream Solutions, a Mansfield based I.T. Support company donated a large amount of money to our cause. Our fund raising in the end raised close to £3000 allowing us to reduce the cost of the trip for pupils and purchase new kits and training wear. This was a great demonstration of community support for our school and we were all so grateful to those that helped us.
Once the tour began the pupils performed so well over the two day tournament. The girls and boys both won their groups on day 1, the boys doing this by winning all 3 games. This meant they progressed to the higher stages on day 2 with a chance to win the competition overall. Although the girls found the standard very tough they still managed to finish fourth overall. The boys came within one game of winning the whole competition but had to settle for the runners up trophy.
I have to admit that personally the Holland 2012 tour was one of the highlights of my teaching career to date. As staff we could not have taken a nicer group of pupils away who represented themselves and the school to highest possible standard. It has already been discussed about doing something similar next school year as we are keen to continue the success we had on the Holland 2012 tour.
We went into the South Notts Cup final with very high hopes that the boys could end their time at The Gedling School having won a trophy. As i have said on a number of occasions, the team is far too good not to have achieved that. Sadly the day of the final will always be remembered as the day that Kaine sadly suffered a very bad injury that he is still recovering from.
As things have now transpired we have been named the South Notts Cup Winners 2011/12 and have finally won a trophy, even if it has not been under the circumstances we had imagined.
The thing that will stay with me though is the amazing team spirit that all the boys showed on that day and in the weeks since. The boys have constantly been asking how Kaine is and many made the effort to go and visit him in hospital in the days after his injury. This also continued when he returned home as players and other pupils in the year group visited him to raise his spirits. This just went to show how special the pupils at our school are and i have to say that i am incredibly proud of the way they conducted themselves through a very distressing time showing each other a lot of support.
Due to the photographer being ill the team photos have been postponed and re-arranged for Friday 6th July at 11:00am.
Can players also make sure that they return their shirts if they still have them. We are still missing a number of them.
The Year 9 season was the first year that i had the opportunity to run this team and i was really excited to see just exactly what we could achieve. I had heard from other staff when i joined the school that we had some very talented pupils in this year group but in years 7 & 8 they had not really achieved too much and i felt with the right organisation we could do well.
One of the first things i wanted to do was to involve the Year 8 boys in the team as they were clearly good enough to cope with playing in the year above. Their introduction straight away strengthened the team and more and more pupils over the coming years have been able to step up a year group to join this squad.
The Year 9 season was very definitely the start of a special time for this team and from nowhere we were all of a sudden a force in Nottinghamshire School Football. We found ourselves rubbing shoulders with the established footballing schools in the area and recorded a number of very impressive results in all three of the competitions we had entered. We had a great run in the Forest Vase losing to the eventual winners West Bridgford in the semi-final and recorded two runners up finishes in both the South Notts Cup and the Nottinghamshire County Cup losing on both occasions by a single goal.
Can all the players please be in school at break time tomorrow in order to take part in the team photo shoot!
