Cricket Leinster is delighted to advise that our Development work has been expanded into Wicklow through the recruitment of Jim Stewart to support a dedicated schools programme throughout the county.
Jim shares his thoughts on the programme and its background below.
'How to develop Cricket in County Wicklow has been the question that occupied my thoughts.
Since returning to the game after a 30 year hiatus (as a lad I played cricket at Parkhall Secondary School, Antrim and my club cricket at Muckamore C.C.), it seemed a natural progression to move from school to your local club. However, when my son Christopher decided he wanted to play the game there was no school or club pathway available in 2009, the only light on the horizon was a cricket camp at Oakhill run by Wicklow C.C., although they didn’t have a youth section to continue the good work.
Jump forward two years to 2011 and Greystones Cricket Club was established with a fundamental ambition to develop youth cricket in the Greystones area. Having a cricket-mad son led me down the coaching badge route. At the same time, I was frustrated that cricket wasn’t being taught in schools and had many a conversation with fellow club member David Drane about this.
In 2014, I had a bit of time on my hands as a stay-at-home Dad and with the help of a few willing coaches we started to do single day introduction to cricket courses for children in local schools, this continued on an annual basis, but we could only do a couple of schools a year.
In 2017, with my children now getting a bit older I started feeling the need to get back to employment and my thoughts turned to cricket development in Wicklow. Was there anything I could do to facilitate this? I had a chat with a few schools, but they couldn’t see any way of funding cricket within the curriculum. I was asked would I consider doing this as an extra-curricular activity with the parents funding the programme. This was interesting, but I still saw the main goal as introducing cricket to as many primary school kids as possible.
Whilst travelling to last year’s C.I.C.A. seminar I mentioned to David Drane the route I was hoping to take, he responded by saying that perhaps Cricket Leinster would be interested in getting involved in some form or other.
In January this year, with an indication from Cricket Leinster that there could potentially be grant funding available, I went out and started knocking on doors. As of February 2018, I am now teaching in 7 schools in theNorth Wicklow area and coachingalmost 600 primary school children on a weekly basis.
This year Wicklow will have 4 schools participating in the Leprechaun Cup (3 for the first-time) - many thanks to Brian O’Rouke and Reinhardt Strydom for facilitating their entries. We will also see the introduction of a playground cricket competition for 3rd and 4th class pupils, with six schools taking part in the inaugural North Wicklow Cup.
By the end of May, more than 1,000 children will have taken part in cricket at school and the aim is to grow playground cricket to have 16 schools competing in next year’s contest- from there the sky is the limit.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the fact that I owe a huge debt of thanks to both David Drane and Philip Smith for their support, encouragement and belief in this project.'