4 April 2008 : Gear Up Our Kids with Rhodes Trail Run
(Article from the Let's Play site www.letsplay.org )
The clattering of hockey sticks echoed across the Rhodes Public School grounds for the first time in its 52 year history last week, when the Rhodes Trail Run presented donations of sports kit to enthusiastic pupils at the school.
The remote hamlet of Rhodes is situated deep in the North East Cape, nestling in the Southern Drakensberg, closer to the Lesotho border than to a tar road.
Conscious of the need for sporting equipment at the school Evie & Darrell Raubenheimer, organisers of the prestigious annual Rhodes Trail Run, contacted Let’s Play and obtained a donation of cricket gloves, bats and soccer balls from their "Gear Up Our Kids" campaign. Gear Up collects second-hand equipment from the public for distribution to schools, community centres and organisations needing equipment.
Rhodes Trail Run then approached St Dominic’s Priory School (Port Elizabeth) as the school’s outdoor club has built a relationship with the village over a number of years through their assistance at the Trail Run, where they man an overnight feeding station in the freezing Kloppershoek kloof. The Priory children were very generous and a large donation of cricket bats, balls, gloves, pads, tennis racquets, hockey sticks, soccer balls and sports drinking bottles was received and added to the Gear Up Our Kids donation.
The Rhodes Trail Run topped up these donations with the purchase of some new soccer balls, tennis racquets and tennis, cricket and hockey balls, making a really significant donation of sports kit for the children.
"Sport is very important for the youth," says a thrilled Mr Benjamin Soul, Principal of the Rhodes Public School. "This very big donation is welcomed as it not only shows the working together of the Marathon with the Rhodes community but it will also encourage children to develop healthy skills".
"It did not take long for the children to split up into groups and start playing cricket, soccer and hockey," says Rhodes Trail Run’s Evie Raubenheimer. "What was wonderful was to see the girls take to hockey so quickly, a sport that they have never played before."
After bowling a few balls at an aspiring Herschelle Gibbs, Mr Soul comments, "Playing together like this is not only so very good for the children but it would be beautiful to see this donation cause the school to find another Ntini, Zondeki or Benni McCarthy. We are most grateful to the people at the Let’s Play organisation, St Dominic’s Priory and of course the Rhodes Trail Run for thinking of our children".
