Record Number of Schools attend Countrystyle Recycling’s Schools’ Day Out!

Monday 12th June saw the return of the Countrystyle Recycling Schools’ Day Out to the Spitfire Ground St Lawrence. After last year’s success it was good to see that this year was no different; lots of fun was had by all that attended.

Kent Cricket welcomed over 1100 school children and 200 teachers from schools across the county to attend day 2 of the LV = Insurance County Championship match vs Surrey, with the help of principle Community Cricket sponsors, Countrystyle Recycling.

After a heavy unexpected downpour to start the day glorious sunshine then took over. The high attendance of children and staff in the ground must have made a difference as on the pitch Kent Men’s Team quickly rattled through a number of Surrey wickets. The school children were hoping to see some early wickets and then watch their Kent heroes have a bat and they were not disappointed. By mid-afternoon the Kent Men had wrapped up the last Surrey batters and were beginning their innings. The Kent players commented on how amazing the atmosphere was during the day and how it helped lift the team throughout their innings.

As well as the exciting cricket, schools were able to take part in various activities throughout the day, including our Countrystyle Assault Course, games of Countdown Cricket and Rapid-Fire Cricket, testing their batting and throwing strength on our speed guns, and some inclusive games in our sports hall. This year we also hired some inflatables with cricket darts and cricket ten-pin bowling. These went down really well and we even had a 180 scored on the dart-board!

Activities were run by the Young Sports Leaders from Simons Langton Girls Grammar School who, despite the extreme heat, were fantastic throughout the day, guiding, supporting and encouraging pupils, overseen by the Kent Cricket Community Team.

Countrystyle Recycling also ran a litter-picking contest. All schools attending were supplied with litter-picking kits and goody boxes to take back to their schools, helping to raise awareness of the importance of showing respect for our environment and recycling as much of our rubbish as possible. All litter picked was weighed by their Garbage Truck- congratulations to Ethelbert Road Primary School who collected a whopping 19kg during the day.

During the afternoon some of the Kent players came out in force to meet, greet and sign autographs for the eagerly-awaiting students. The event was a huge success and everyone had a great day out.

Martin Heathcote CEO at Countrystyle Recycling said…

“We are so proud to work with Kent Cricket to teach children all about recycling. Using sport makes the learning process fun and we really do think it has been another great success. It’s nice to give back to the next generation and see so many happy faces on what has been a great event, and one we look forward to each year. There is a lot of commitment that goes in to making this event happen and we shall continually evolve to keep children engaged”

See below for some comments from schools and partners:

Year 6s at Spring Grove School said “It was a great day with lots of fun cricket activities. We had loads of fun in the blazing hot sun. It was so very nice having year 10 Langton girls to help us out throughout the course of the day. We liked the blind-fold cricket which helped us with our senses. The speed monitor was extremely fun which told us the speed of our bowling and throwing. A good all-round day!”

Community Cricket Officer Jamie Harris – “It was great to be able to deliver another successful event this season, it was good to see that so much fun was had by all the schools that attended. We were able to provide a number of exciting cricketing activities that the children could compete in but it was great to be able to combine these with important messages about the environment and recycling. Having the young sports leaders again this year really enhanced the activities that we could offer as well as giving everyone a better experience of cricket which we hope has helped to inspire many children to carry on playing cricket in the future”

Kent Cricket would like to thank everyone involved in the event:

• Countrystyle Recycling for their sponsorship, presence on the day and their continued involvement with Community Cricket in Kent.
• Simon Langton Girls Grammar school for the use of their field for games and their amazing team of Sports Leaders – they were a real credit to the School.
• Our Community Team for all their hard work organising and running the day.
• The Commercial, Marketing and Match Day teams for their support which enabled the event to go ahead.

And most importantly we would like to thank all the Schools that attended- we hope you had a fantastic day and we look forward to seeing you again in 2024!