Willenhall school children enjoying opportunity to try out unique sport

The pupils from Beacon Primary School have been learning and playing the sport of crown green bowls under the expert training of Jay Holdcroft, a sports teacher at the school.

The school invested in installing a proper crown green bowls pitch three years ago, with executive head teacher Paul Drew saying that Mr Holdcroft had spoken to him about introducing the sport at the school.

He said: "Jay is heavily into crown green bowls and talked to me for years about getting children to play it as it's very much perceived as an older person's sport and he's only in his 30s and national youth coach.

"We invested in the pitch three years ago, with a proper company doing it, fencing it off and making sure it has all the ditches and bits like that, and we got the children playing it.

"I will say this, they absolutely love it and it's different from just playing football and cricket and netball, plus the staff have started playing it as well, doing sessions after school."

Mr Drew said that the school might be the only one in the UK with its own crown green bowls pitch and said that, as a member school of the Lighthouse Federation, he had wanted other schools within the federation to come and try the sport out.

He said: "We just wanted to get it out there to other schools, so we've had a two-day event where we've had four schools in today doing taster sessions, which has been a good way to just get them to try it and see if they are interested.

"It's just another option for kids as we find that boys gravitate towards football and girls towards netball, so it's just another sporting option, as well as being very calming and fun for the kids."