On Wednesday The Prince’s Trust Team 32 were in the Centre. The Study Centre and The Prince’s Trust have worked together since the new Study Centre building opened in April 2007. Visiting the Study Centre enables young people in each team to access computers, printers and other ICT facilities. This week, the members of Team 32 worked on producing or improving their Curriculum Vitae’s to maximise potential employment opportunities. They also started to work on their personal statements that will form part of their final presentation at Sixfields Stadium in December.

Last night was the Cobblers Study Centre Presentation Evening! The Players Lounge at Sixfields Stadium was filled to bursting point with students, family, friends and teachers from Lyncrest, Chiltern, Upton Meadows, St Luke’s and Falconers Hill primary schools and Danetre Secondary School. During the course of the evening students are recognised and rewarded for their hard work in the Study Centre. The Champion’s League is a reward and incentive scheme run during Playing for Success sessions and the Presentation Evening provides Centre staff the opportunity to award the various league winners with their prizes and certificates. Northampton Town First Team players, Chris Dunn and Seb Harris, were on hand to present certificates and goody bags, pose for photo’s and sign autographs for the students. The evening was a great success and we now look forward to our new groups from Duston and Kingsthorpe joining us in the Study Centre after the October half term break.

This evening was the last Playing for Success session for our group from Upton Meadows and St Luke’s. There were a number of activities on offer including smoothy making. Bekah and Lucy had the opportunity to make their smoothies and wrote the following contribution for the website:
Tonight at the Study Centre we made Smoothies. These were our recipes. Lucy used 4 Strawberries,1 banana,3 spoons of pineapple pieces. It was lovely and great!
Rebekah used 5 strawberries,1 banana and 6 blueberries. It was also a lovely smoothie!!

Today Simon Brown and Steve Guinan were interveiwed by 3 students from The Gateway School. The names of the students involved were Grant Pettit, Adrian Rodgers and Adam Jones. Adrian and Grant were the camera operators and Adam was the interviewer. Simon Brown was the first to be interviewed Steve Guinan was the second. The boys got Simon and Steve’s autograph’s they were really chuffed. More to come next week!!!

Adam Jones

On Friday 16th October, eight Barclaycard employees and twenty-six Year 3 pupils from West Haddon Primary School were invited to take part in a Barclaycard day at the Cobblers Study Centre. The late Northampton Town star Walter Tull provided an historical theme for the day.

Walter Tull made 110 appearances for Northampton Town between 1911 and 1914 after becoming the club’s first black player. He was signed up to the Army in 1914 as a private and rose to the rank of officer. The Cobblers legend was killed in action on the Western Front in 1918.

The first activity of the day was a Walter Tull themed stadium tour. The young learners got to explore the Sixfields Stadium whilst looking for facts, which had been hidden in and around the stadium in the ‘Walter Tull Trail’. In the afternoon, the Walter Tull theme continued with a comparison task, which saw the pupils compare a photograph of Walter Tull in 1909 to a picture of current Cobblers player Andy Holt. The youngsters commented on the differences in kits, football boots, logos, sponsors and stadium facilities. The young learners also got to visit the Walter Tull Memorial at the end of the day

Other activities included our popular Stadium Orienteering challenge and a football practical session, which was led on the Cobblers training pitch by the NTFC Community Programme.

All the pupils and staff had lots of fun and hopefully the day added an extra dimension to the historical investigations that have been taking place in school. We would like to thank to all the Barclaycard staff for their support and enthusiasm to get involved as mentors for the day.

Take a look below at the first short animation made by Lyncrest Primary at the Cobblers Study Centre. Our PfS returners group from Lyncrest have been in to test out a new animation session to be included in future PfS sessions! The rest of the class will be coming in over the next two terms to test out more sessions. Thanks boys for your input!
Made by Ben Parson, Jordon Robinson, Michael Myers and Adam Alcock 15/10/09

Last night the very first young people to achieve their Duke of Edinburgh Award within the Football League partnership received their awards from Craig Hinton and Dean Beckwith.  Margaret Hillyer led the  first Duke of Edinburgh programme based at Northampton Town Football Club in the Study Centre over the past year.  To read the full press release click here

Happy Birthday Harley!

It is almost our last week at the Study Centre, I have really enjoyed coming to the Cobblers so I started loving Mondays. I think Jaimie, Jean, Daniel and Margaret have helped me a lot. They taught me how to be friendly and helped me to make friends and they are my new best friends. I liked playing the hoop game as we had to work as a team and not break the circle of life. I am looking forward to Presentation Evening but will miss the Cobblers.  By Kerrianne.

No words needed…