100’s of pupils at Tonbridge Grammar School, many of them from the Sevenoaks District, will now benefit from a £1 million sports upgrade after the school spent 10 years trying to build the facility.
Sophie Bray, MBE and Laura Unsworth, MBE, joined Dame Helena Morrissey, Head of Personal Investing at Legal and General Investment Management, to formally open the pitch and other facilities.
Students took part in a training session with the Team GB players and had the opportunity to ask questions and pick up playing tips. The sportswomen joined a conversation with Dame Helena, author of the newly-released ‘Good Time to be a Girl’, to discuss similarities in the worlds of sport and business.
They spoke about what the two sectors have in common for promoting diversity, encouraging resilience and seizing opportunity.
The School’s previously sloping grass field have been levelled to create three flat and drained training spaces, two on grass, plus a floodlit all-weather pitch. The short pile synthetic turf is designed for competition hockey and multi-use training for a wide variety of other sporting activities including football, rugby, tennis, netball and more. The new facilities also include a double long jump pit, a sprint track and cricket nets.
The project marks the successful conclusion of the schools long held aspiration to significantly enhance outdoor sports provision at the School.
It has been achieved with close collaboration between the School and a wide number of experts within Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council and Kent Sport.
The School is also profoundly grateful to the private funding and corporate sponsorship that has brought outdoor sport and recreation to generations of young people at the school.
