Member Article

EdStart & Swinton Lions Rugby Festival: Roaring Success

Broadoak Primary School topped the table at the Swinton Lions and EdStart rugby festival, taking home the trophy after an action-packed tournament, as part of Roaring Success: a scheme set up by Swinton Lions and children’s sports education provider EdStart.

Setting out to make rugby league more accessible to local primary school children, Roaring Success was launched by EdStart and Swinton Lions as part of their ongoing mission to encourage children to develop a love of the sport.

The event, which was a culmination of six-weeks of training for the school children – saw Broadoak Primary School, St Charles Primary School, St Peter’s Primary School, Moorside Primary School and St Mark’s Primary School all battle it out on the pitch.

As well as being trained by EdStart’s team of coaches, the teams were also joined on the day by Swinton Lions’ star players – offering up their expert advice, as each school took on the teams, with Broadoak Primary School declared the winners, having won 4 of their matches and drawing in 1 match – with St Charles Primary School coming a close second.

Commenting on the event, managing director of EdStart, Chris Irwin, said: “When we set out to organise this rugby festival, the aim was to get the children excited about sports and interested in rugby and I think we’ve achieved just that.

“Watching the schools turn out and put their all into the rugby festival is great to see. The children have learnt new sports skills as well as developing key life skills – which is what we’re all about at EdStart. Broadoak primary school put in a great performance on the day and it was excellent to see how proud they were to take home the trophy.”

Steve Wild, Swinton Lions Community Sports Foundation, commented: ‘’We’re delighted with how well the “Roaring Success“ project has gone, introducing children from the local area to the wonderful sport of Rugby League, as well as their local team – the Swinton Lions.

“Each of the school teams showed just how much they had learnt in the past six weeks, which is really encouraging and has hopefully ignited their love of the sport and their interest in the team. We look forward to welcoming them and their families to Swinton Lions’ home matches.”

EdStart provides sports coaching and extracurricular school sports clubs, delivered by a team of highly trained and qualified professional coaches. The organisation helps schools meet government targets for weekly levels of physical exercise for children, whilst lightening the load on form teachers with innovative new sports software.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sam Williams .