sports saturday on a monday!?

waiting for their awards

sorry for the lack of posts/updates from the village of hope. maz' sister viv and our brother in law mark from the vale of aylesbury vineyard (church, not wine estate) have joined us for a 3 week trip to see what we get up to and at the back end of last week we managed to get away for a few days, enjoying some time of rest and relaxation.....but we are back now and the updates should come through thick and fast again.

our 'first day back' was a busy one, not only catching up on emails and all those things we missed last week but running a sports day for the 6 clubs that we run each and every term time afternoon.

i must say a huge thanks to our two new dutch students, stephan and wieke, who along with emily and our local mentors, did a great job of planning and prepping the day, and not to take anything away from any of our previous students they have left an amazing legacy of documentation both physical and electronic which will make our lives a lot easier in the future.

hillside boys with their winning football shirts

the day began with the collection of the children from 5 pick up points in the formal and informal settlements around grabouw, our farm team was transported by their own transport. whilst we picked up the kids, the set up team got busy 'setting up' the pitches and organising the kits that each of the teams would wear. the sports outreach team, mentioned above, were joined by kat, mark, jen and a handful of other dutch students who would be the 'team managers'. we even had a visit from the children we look after at the village of hope, which was really special.

after the 130 children had arrived, prayers were said, kits handed out and the games began, we held a huge netball tournaments for the girls, with 7 teams taking part, and two groups of boys football, an under 14 and an over 14 tournament. made up of a total of 11 teams.

the joy, noise and sportsmanship that surrounded the elgin county club during the morning was amazing, all the children behaved really well, they played hard but fair and the standard of skill that was shown was something to behold, we are very proud of them that they are learning the sports, life and lifestyle skills that we speak to them about each and every week.

we were served a hot dog lunch, with rolls sponsored by the local spar and Vienna's from the roundtable, and after a short presentation/game from some of the other dutch (HAN) students about the need to collect rubbish and recycle the winners of the sports tournaments were announce.

for the record, the rooidakke girls team won the netball from a hard fought hillside team in second place in the league, and for the first time a team from hillside won the under 14 league, they were blessed with an A and B side, and iraq won the over 14 league with our new team from site-view coming a strong second.

the winning teams were presented with a soccer shirt (we wont mention their name on this blog but they come from west london and aren't my favorites (me being a QPR fan!).....but the kids really appreciated the thought and we hope that we will be able to repeat this again very soon.

roundtable headlines in grabouwer

last saturday's sports outreach has been covered in this weeks 'elgin grabouwer', one of the highlights of the day were the new tee shirts which were provided by the local roundtable and this story has been chosen for the paper.

we want to thank all the guys from the elgin grabouw roundtable for their continued support of our work and the way that they give so selflessly when we call upon them.

another successful sports saturday

last saturday we held our last sports saturday of the 2010 year, an eventful year for sport in south africa and not one that we have let pass by either.

this final sports saturday took place at our new venue the groenberg (green mountain) high school in grabouw, where we hosted around 100 children for a morning of soccer and netball competition.

the teams were made up of the two new schools project we have started, KMP (katharine murray primary) and pineview primary, who previously made up our hillside and rooidakke teams, along with our established community teams from iraq and waterwerks as well the farm team from remhoogte. the boys were split into under 13 and under 15 age groups with lisa organising the girls as she felt fit!....

all the boys had to play in bare feet as not everyone had sports shoes but we were able to provide football shirts to all teams, including bristol city, reading and coventry city, shame there were no QPR tops but they remain top of the football league championship in england so we're not really moaning.

we played on 4 pitches with referees from the HAN university helping out to keep control and after some stiff competition, the u13's was won by a team from waterwerks, the u15's by the boys from iraq and the netball by remhoogte, the school teams performed well and really enjoyed playing in their first real tournament.

after the games we were treated to a wonderful braai (BBQ) which was provided and cooked by the guys from the roundtable, who also sponsored our new 'village of hope sports outreach' tee shirts.

if you would like to sponsor a sports saturday which costs around £100 to run with drinks, food and prizes then please contact us!