{"id":55,"date":"2014-03-06T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T12:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.risen.org.uk\/?p=55"},"modified":"2014-03-06T11:10:54","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T11:10:54","slug":"blog-march-6th-a-bit-of-crofton-school-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/?p=55","title":{"rendered":"Blog March 6th \u201cA Bit Of Crofton School Life”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Scan<\/a><\/p>\n

Winning Basketball Team at “The Tube” –\u00a0left to right\u00a0 Ian Glover, Lee Addelly (Hiscock) Graham Thomas, Paul Cummings, Dave Chance and Martin Fuge.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.risen.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/01-Track-01-8.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

“One in a Million” featuring Lucy Stimpson Maynard \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0lyrics Jimmie Guyman and Ken Shearsmith<\/p>\n

As I said in my last blog I loved teaching PE at Crofton School. For most of my career OFSTED Inspections did not exist and there was no GCSE PE. \u00a0So my performance as a teacher was assessed pretty much by the results of our school teams. Although for the first two years at Crofton we had no field (as it was full of flints – see blog Feb 20th) we still trained at Stubbington Recreation Ground, focusing on playing two- touch football, and eventually won the Gosport and Fareham Cup. \u00a0About 15 years later we won the Hampshire Cup (not with the same team!) \u00a0\u00a0We also won the Hampshire Cricket Cup, which was a particularly amazing achievement as it is normally the province of private schools.<\/p>\n

But it was in Basketball that we had our most successes.\u00a0 When I arrived at Crofton in 1975 the school had just opened on the Marks Road site. \u00a0The staff consisted of Mr Boulton as Head with Mr Bradley and Mrs Hartley as Deputy Heads. Mr White was Head of Department for Maths, Mr Taylor, English, \u00a0Miss Simmonds, \u00a0RE (not Mr Mill believe it or not- he joined Crofton a few years later ) Mr Mitchell for Science, Mr Wickett for Technology and me for PE\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0The First Year entry had been temporarily accommodated in 1974 \u00a0at Crofton Hammond Junior School so when I joined, the school had only Year 7 and 8s (then called Year 1 and 2) Mrs Jan Davies had been in charge of PE while \u00a0the school was at Hammond\u00a0 so it was, in fact her and not me \u00a0who was the first PE teacher of Crofton School.<\/p>\n

So to get myself established I felt I had to produce winning teams, but there was no field and only the indoor facility of a gymnasium. So what sport could we get good at with just a gym? Gymnastics was out of the question as my own personal performance was limited to a headstand, headstand, forward and backward roll and on a good day a neck spring- and once or twice in my life a hand spring – off the floor I hasten to add!<\/p>\n

I was a wimp in Volleyball as it hurt my hands when \u201cdigging\u201d so that was out -Badminton did not cater for enough pupils so it had to be Basketball. The problem was I had hardly played the game- \u00a0I had always been told at school that I was not tall enough (see blog Feb 13th<\/sup>) \u00a0However\u00a0 I was fortunate enough to know some American Basketball players (friends of friends) such as Jimmie Guymon, Paul Stimpson and Mark Saiers.\u00a0 From them \u00a0I learnt how to coach \u00a0the \u201cUSA way \u201cand was able to teach our students techniques that only the Americans knew, such as the spin dribble.<\/p>\n

The School Caretaker, Mr Ron Stevens would open the gym when he arrived at school at 6.30 am and players would arrive that early and practice most mornings for a couple of hours. I later discovered that at the weekends \u201cbreak ins\u201d would occur with some boys practicing all day and then even staying the night! \u00a0\u00a0As you can imagine they got really good but Hayling Island School always beat us. That is until the last game of the team\u2019s final year at school when we met them in the S.E Hants Finals held on neutral ground at Warblington School. We took a coach load of supporters and the atmosphere was electric and yes we won, beating Hayling in our very last game. I brought the Cup home and later that night presented it to the team at the \u201cTube\u201d Disco as in featured pic. \u00a0That was a night I will never forget – after four years eventually beating our great rivals in our final game – brilliant. By the way to Hayling\u2019s great credit they lost with good grace.<\/p>\n

Martin Fuge who played in that game was on the edge of the England team and Paul Cummings played National League for Solent Stars but our first international player was Peter Wort who represented the England Basketball U15 team.\u00a0 So Basketball became a tradition at Crofton and we had many boys and girls playing for SE Hants and SE England. We won the prestigious Hampshire Cup twice and were usually around the top in the local leagues. We also travelled to places like Durham in the National Cup. Great times!<\/p>\n

For many years Crofton used a system for Tutor Groups which included two \u201caccelerated\u201d classes – that is two of the Tutor Groups were comprised exclusively of pupils who would have gone to Grammar Schools if Grammar Schools had not been replaced with Comprehensives. For many years I did not have a Tutor Group- I had been given that time to arrange fixtures. I could not get away with that forever though and eventually became a Tutor of an accelerated Tutor Group, surprisingly called 1S! I had many Tutor Groups during my Crofton career and I really enjoyed each one. However the first one was always going to be extra special and it is to that Tutor group that the pupils and staff of Crofton owe \u201cThe Prom\u201d And I\u2019ll tell you all about that in the next blog of March 13th<\/sup><\/p>\n

I have chosen a song recorded by Lucy Stimpson Maynard but one that is not on any Mustard Seed CD. \u00a0It was written specifically for Jimmie Guymon – Jimmie was destined to play in the NBA, the greatest league in the world, but got struck down really ill with Jaundice (the yellow poison in the song) . When he recovered he came to England and became what most believe\u00a0 to be the best player ever to play in this \u00a0country.\u00a0 This song \u201cOne in a Million\u201d is, I think, the only song that has been recorded that is not overtly Christian.\u00a0 It tells of Jimmie\u2019s dream to play in the NBA and to be the one in a million who makes it. I adapted the lyrics from the words of a poem Jimmie wrote about his dream.<\/p>\n

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Winning Basketball Team at “The Tube” –\u00a0left to right\u00a0 Ian Glover, Lee Addelly (Hiscock) Graham Thomas, Paul Cummings, Dave Chance and Martin Fuge. “One in a Million” featuring Lucy Stimpson Maynard \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ken-shearsmiths-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}