Inter Schools Championship

Steve Davis was in Sheffield last week to launch an Inter Schools Championship which will get more children involved in snooker.

The tournament will see 16 schools preparing over the coming months for finals day on April 17th, the day before the World Championship starts. Some 150 young players, boys and girls, will gather at Sheffield Park Academy to compete for prizes in ’60-Second Challenge’ and ‘Snooker Relay’ categories.

The schools are taking part in Cue Zone Into Schools; the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association’s global grass roots development programme. Its main objective is to develop the sport of snooker within schools using a concept known as Functional Snooker.

Functional Snooker has been recognised by OFSTED as good practice in teaching English and Maths through sport. This concept removes traditional scoring, replacing it with numbered balls, which retain their values, whilst others have symbols to indicate whether to multiply, subtract or use addition to calculate the value of the shot.

Youngsters can train and achieve the Official WPBSA World Snooker Schools and Community Coaching Award which can be linked to the BTEC Sport Qualification, this will give young people the empowerment to develop their own facility within school. With each programme there is a scholarship for a teacher or a nominated person to take part in the two day WPBSA World Snooker Coach. Programme to become a qualified Snooker Coach, led by six times World Champion Steve Davis and NLTG’s Chris Lovell, who is responsible for the sports Grass Roots Development and Coaching Programmes.

The first phase of Cue Zone Into Schools was launched at the 2013 World Championship in Sheffield with twelve schools taking part across the UK, with many achieving nationally recognised qualifications using snooker.

Each school will receive:

• Three x 6ft tables to set up their own Cue Zone in school

• WPBSA World Snooker Coaching Scholarships, allowing two teachers in each school to train to become snooker coaches.

• Up to four scholarships for either the year 11 children or teaching assistants or someone directly involved in supervising the Cue Zone within school on the WPBSA World Snooker Community Coach 1 Day Course, again delivered in Sheffield on Saturday 31st January 2015.

• Full support on how to set up and deliver Cue Zone Into Schools within school.

• An invitation to take part in Functional Snooker sessions at the 2015 World Snooker Championship within Cue Zone, located within the Winter Gardens

• We are also offering a junior referee training programme where children can become Junior Cue Zone Into Schools referees, this training will be carried out by Brendan Moore in April shortly before the 2015 World Championship.

For further information contact Chris Lovell at [email protected] or 07970679810.