New Age Kurling: MKC Heroes event 2023

Thursday 29^th June 2023 – It was my pleasure to host an event with a difference today at Leigham Primary School. A group of children from the Leigham MKC Heroes club invited along children from Eggbuckland Vale who attend the same club at their school. All of the children that attend these clubs have a family member who is or was involved with the armed forces so they have a lot in common. Our event today was New Age Kurling which is a target sport that involves strategy and team work. This sport has been adapted from curling so that it can be played indoors, on a flat surface. Each player delivers a ‘stone’ towards the target at the other end by sliding it smoothly across the floor. The score is then determined by the number of stones closest to the centre of the target. After taking all of the teams through a quick introduction, we then got in to playing some friendly games. We didn’t keep any formal scores today as the aim was to create connection, make new friends and just have some fun. Part way through the afternoon, we did a hands up exercise to see who had a family member in which of the armed forces. So many children had a relative in the same force as someone from the other school and this sparked a lot of conversations and a shared understanding of experience – it was really something to see. After a bit more game play, we upped the stakes a little by getting the teams to take turns at refereeing the games  - this also gave the teachers an opportunity to play! I am not ashamed in saying that we got beaten – a lot! For some strange reason, the teams got more competitive when playing us! We definitely had a lot of fun though and I think our MKC Heroes did to. In fact, we enjoyed this one so much, we are going to do something very similar again next year. I would like to say a huge thank you to Mrs Tucker, Mrs Jerrett and Mr. Wren for all their help with this one – I had such a great afternoon, thank you for having me.