On Friday 30th May, Glenrothes Cricket Club hosted its annual Schools Cricket Festival and our new ground in the Gilvenbank Park. In sunny conditions, students from 7 local schools matched their cricket skills against each other to see who would represent the region in the Fife Finals Kwik Cricket Festival.

The schools participating were Pitcoudie, Tanshall, Collydean, Newcastle, Markinch, Carlton and Star. In a few competitive fixtures Pitcoudie and Carlton emerged as tournaments winners and will go on to the Fife Finals at Falkland CC.

The students (P6's) have for the past few weeks been taking part is cricket coaching carried out by GCC Head Coach, Graeme Beghin and coaching assistant Robert Hutchison. "The response from all the schools has been incredible and we have seen students really take on the new challenge and have loads of fun participating in this new game," said Graeme, who was very impressed with the natural talent shown by so many students.

The GCC Cricket Development Program, supported by Fife Junior Cricket Association has been seeing over 600 primary school students each week. In some schools the students have started their own after school cricket clubs and all have been invited to the Glenrothes Gladiators which is the clubs junior section. "We are teaching the Gladiators about the game in safe and positive environment and we are already competing with well established junior clubs in the area."

The Gladiators U11's recently took on Largo CC in their first hardball fixture and won the game comprehensively. On Sunday we hosted local Fife Clubs on a KWIK Cricket Festival and won 2 of our 3 games.

Cricket is Scotland's fastest growing summer sport and with so much being invested in the game at grass roots level in Glenrothes, it is likely that cricket will grow within the community and contribute to the positive sports development of the local youth.