Over the Easter break, staff and fifty students from the academy went on an exciting sports tour to play football and hockey in Holland.



Over the Easter break, fifty students from the academy went on an exciting mixed sports tour to Holland.

After a very early departure the group of sporty students arrived in Valkenburg in Holland on the afternoon of Monday 9th April.  A nice evening meal was followed by an introduction to the week ahead - and what a week it was!

Tuesday began bright and early with breakfast served at 7.15am. After this each team headed to their training facility for the first training session. This was followed by an afternoon of laser tag in which despite Mr Crager's best efforts, he ended up on the losing team. Johnathan Williams and Kai Matthews were the top performers.

The evening consisted of the first set of fixtures for both the hockey and football teams. The footballers were up against Galeen Zuid, with the U15s losing out in a 10 goal thriller as they went down 6-4 with Adam Rees scoring a hat-trick. The U13s were against a very strong side and lost 4-0. The hockey team were also against a very strong side called Heerlen HC and they also lost 4-0.

holland trip
holland trip
holland trip

After a hearty breakfast, all teams headed off to their second training sessions to prepare for the evening’s fixtures on Wednesday. The afternoon activity was tobogganing with both Mr Syed and Mr Coates showing  fantastic speed down the tobogganing tracks. However, the top tobogganing award went to Josh Hawkes and few people could argue against that!

Early evening resulted in the hockey girls heading off to HC Blerick in which Miss Thomson said the girls played the best standard she had ever seen them play. Despite losing 3-1, the girls had much more confidence heading into Thursday’s tournament. The boys travelled to Scharn FC with both teams against strong teams once more. The U15s went down 5-0 whilst the U13s won a seven goal thriller 4-3 with Ryan Cole and Ryan Lam both demonstrating very strong performances.

holland trip
holland trip
holland trip

The boys and girls did different activities on Thursday morning. The girls visited a water park called Mosaqua whilst the boys opted for a tour of the PSV Eindhoven stadium. All students had a fantastic time on their chosen excursion.

The afternoon gave all teams a chance to compete against the other English teams that were also in the resort. The netball team came in 4th position from six teams with Miss Gill being pleased with how much the team had improved over the previous two days. The hockey team were predominantly against private school opposition and managed to win one and draw one of their five games.

The U15 football team played two games and won them both 1-0. Chris Salmon was the hero when he scored the winner in the second game and injured himself in the process. The U13 football team had just the one game due to the fact that only one other team of that age category was in the resort. After an end to end game the result ended 3-3 and thus was decided via a penalty shoot out. Josh Betts managed to save two penalties to ensure that both the Academy teams were crowned tournament winners. For the presentations both Gary Lee (u13) and Chris Cook (u15) were rewarded for all of their hard work by being awarded the coach's 'player of the week' award.

holland trip
holland trip
holland trip

The week ended with a disco for all the students in resort and this gave students to chance to chat with students from other English schools or to simply dance the night away.

Mr Coates (Party leader) would like to thank all the academy staff who supported this trip. In addition, he would like to thank parents for all their support, Masterclass staff in resort including the reps and the coaching team, The Hotel Walram staff who were very accommodating for our students, Brendan from Compass Royston who was our main driver to and from Holland and of course all of our students who all demonstrated high standards of behaviour and maturity throughout the week.

This is something that the PE Department would like to run again so watch out for updates from September 2012 onwards.


holland trip
holland trip
holland trip