Newbuildings PS complete memorable double

Even more impressive for the east bank school is that both the boys and girls won their respective Kwik Cricket Challenge titles, much to the delight of principal Chris Scholes.

“It’s the first time that the cricket association had a girls competition and we ended up beating Artigarvan PS by just one run, which was great,” admitted Scholes.

“Having watched them in their semi-final match I have to admit that I thought they had more fire power than us, but because it’s ‘quick cricket’ - you can lose runs if you lose a wicket and that is the major difference from the main game and as it worked out we beat them by one run.

“I feel this form of ‘quick cricket’ is really good for the children and you can see the children starting to learn the aspects of the game very quickly and in the long term that means the kids really start learning the rules of the game.”

Principal Scholes was equally as proud of the boys who won their title after ironically also overcoming Artigarvan Primary School in the final which was played on the wicket at Stormont.

One player who throughout the campaign played her part was Alanna Dalzell - who featured in the boys’ side.

“To determine the Northern Ireland champion, we firstly had to win the Londonderry heat and then we won the North West regional heat, before overcoming Artigarvan in the final,” added the Principal.

“Alanna is a great all round cricketer, in fact she’s a great bowler and because of that she didn’t play in the girls’ team, she played in the boys’ team.

“Brian Allen who is regional director of the competition, said he felt we stood a really good chance in Belfast and I too felt we had a chance of winning the competition.

“We didn’t have any extreme weak spots, we had some really excellent players and some who were maybe not quite that high, but they weren’t far off it; so whenever you are batting we could bat right down the order,” said Mr Scholes.