At this year’s London Investec Cup back in July, the Museum ran a quiz for the many school parties who visited the event and came on to the Museum stand. The school children were given a set of questions where all the answers could be found somewhere among the exhibits. We were delighted by the response and enthusiasm shown by the children; maybe it was the offer of prizes for the best entries but we’d like to think that there was also some interest in finding out more about the history of hockey.

The winners were:
Milly, Aylesbury Vale Academy (hockey stick)
Polia, Jenny Hammond Primary (hockey stick)
Amina, Kingsbury High School (sweatshirt)
The prizes were kindly donated by Mercian Sports.

During one break in the matches when the weather was at its worst, we did have the whole party from Jenny Hammond School on the stand doing the quiz (see photo). It was very hectic but the children definitely forgot about how cold and wet they were as they raced around trying to find all the answers. Thanks to their teacher, Gemma Butterworth, for encouraging all the pupils to take part.

We were supported in this initiative by Jon Rye, Director of Hockey at Holcombe HC and an expert in developing educational outreach programmes. We are already in discussion with Jon about how we can develop a wider set of educational tools that help us get our hockey heritage message across to many more school children.

Katie Dodd, December 2014