TALENTED footballers from Lewes Old Grammar School have been selected to play in the world’s largest youth tournament in Sweden, hosting 1700 teams, next summer.

Year 6s Reuben Fries, Luke Whitefield and Thomas Barry, Year 7s Billy McKay, Alec Clifford and Rowan Bell, Year 8s Charlie Hatch, Finn Craig, Henry Brown, Theo Summers and Year 9s Charlie Milner, Toby Warren and Stan Knight have all been invited to attend The Gothia Cup in the Swedish city of Gothenburg in July 2020 as members of the Prep School Pumas.

The Cup sees teams of different age groups compete from 80 nations across the globe. A startling 52,000 spectators will turn out to the tournament’s opening ceremony on July 12.

Players attend a residential training camp in the Easter holidays where they will meet their fellow team mates from across the south east and receive top level coaching which will not only focus on developing physical and technical abilities but will also see football psychologists developing the team’s mental fitness. There will also be workshops in nutrition, hydration and sleep.

Organiser for the Pumas Dan Abraham said: “This is a meeting place for the world’s youth, irrespective of skin colour, religion or nationality where football is the common denominator. It is a wonderful opportunity for the players to meet friends from around the world and take part in an event that is full of joy for the game.”

Charlie Hatch, from Hove, said: “It’s a bit mind blowing to imagine so many people from all around the world gathering in one place to watch the games. I can’t wait to start training with the team, getting to know everyone and then travel out to Gothenburg. I have never been to Sweden before and I am really excited!”

Lewes Old Grammar School head of football Murray Heywood added: “Last year six boys were chosen to go out to Sweden and this year again we are delighted that so many boys have been selected. This event is a real once-in-a-lifetime moment and parents have told me that the opening ceremony is electrifying. I know the boys will never forget it and I hope they remember to savour every moment!”

WHILST most children were spending their half term relaxing, 11-year-old Alice Dryden was busy dreaming up ways to raise money for Cancer Research.

The Lewes Old Grammar School pupil was inspired to help her local Cancer Research shop on the town’s high street because her grandmother was taken by the disease a few years back.

So with money she had won at her school’s Dragon’s Den competition a few months earlier, Alice bought the materials to make Halloween-themed pom-pom key rings and set about crafting them. She then delivered them to the shop which sells them for donations.

The keyrings have been selling like hotcakes and now she is planning on making more with a festive theme.

Said Alice: “I really wanted to do something positive for Cancer Research and I just came up with this idea because I like making pompoms. My mum rang the shop to see if they would like my keyrings and they said they thought it was a great idea. It makes me feel happy to know that I am making a small difference with the pompoms so I am definitely going to do more.”

Alice’s mum Fiona Dryden added: “We are so proud of her. It was all her idea and she did it in her free time with the money she won from the schools Dragon’s Den competition which we were very touched by. Her grandma would have been so proud of her.”

LOGS headmaster Robert Blewitt said: “When I hear about this sort of selfless behaviour and thoughtfulness, it makes me incredibly proud. What a kind thing to do.”

LEWES OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL table tennis whizz James Brandon got to meet one of his heroes when gold medallist Paralympian Will Bayley came to his club to film for BBC Breakfast TV.

The 12-year-old schoolboy was training at Brighton Table Tennis Club (BTTC) when Bayley, who is the world number one Paralympic player, arrived to film with BBC Breakfast’s Mike Bushell and Brighton Youtuber Saffron Barker, ahead of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing as all three were competing.

James, who started playing table tennis three years ago and is now ranked 91 in the country for his U13 age group, plays for the U15 BTTC Cadets as well as representing Sussex in the Sussex Cadets 2nd team.

He said: “My table tennis heroes are Timo Boll, Tom Jarvis and Will Bayley. I have met Will a few times, most recently when Mike Bushell came with the BBC Breakfast team to interview him at the club, along with Saffron Barker, ahead of the Strictly launch. I even ended up seeing myself on TV!”

And the schoolboy, who lives in Brighton, has been inspired by the meeting to aim high in his sport.

He added: “‘I am already so proud of what I have achieved, particularly having only started to play competitively a year ago. Not only have I been invited to join the Cadets at BTTC, but I have been asked to play in the National Junior League, and represented Sussex, which was a huge honour. But by the end of the 2019/20 season in July, I would like to be ranked in the Top 50 U13 boys. I am also hoping to progress into the Cadet Elites at BTTC next year and maybe in the future enter tournaments, and attend training camps with the club abroad, in places such as Portugal, Germany and Sweden.”

Brighton Table Tennis Club is renowned for its inclusive approach to the sport. More than 1,250 people play in the club’s weekly sessions. Their number includes people with learning disabilities, young people from the Brighton Travellers site, Looked After Children, people with physical disabilities, people from the LGBT community and young asylum seekers. The youngest player is 2. The oldest is 98. The club is the world’s first recognised Club of Sanctuary, for its work with refugees.

A HANDFUL of budding poets from Lewes Old Grammar School are celebrating after hearing that their work will be published in an anthology of childrens’ verse.

The nine pupils entered their poems in the Young Writers’ Poetry Escape annual competition which challenged schoolchildren across the country to write on the theme of “breaking the silence and telling the truth”. Some 8000 entries were received.

The poems chosen for publication are judged by an editorial team and the criteria includes perception, imagination, creativity, expression, originality and use of language.

Wills Berry, Rosalie St Maur Sheil, Mia Demetriou, Louis Sadek, Olivia Richardson, Micah Papadopoulos, Sophie Watson, Maddy Horney and George Stone will all see their creations in print.

Lewes Old Grammar School English teacher Carla Moloney said: “We introduced the competition to the pupils in their English lessons last year and it really fired their imaginations. The poems tackle so many issues that they provide a real insight into what is on the minds of young people today. Everything from global warming, feminism and animal welfare to online bullying, Brexit and Trump were tackled! They were written about with such feeling and originality – it makes us very proud as a school that their work was judged externally to be worthy of being published. We look forward to entering again next year and discovering even more writers in the making!”

A GROUP of Lewes Old Grammar School pupils spent their summer holidays trekking through the Amazon to reach a remote Peruvian village and install a tank that would provide fresh drinking water for the locals for the first time.

Nine teens travelled to Iquitos, a jungle metropolis in the northern Amazon basin, which can only be reached by air or sea and then by boat to reach a remote island which is home to just 100 people.

The pupils had raised £10,000 in sponsorship to pay for the materials and costs of the water tank and, with the help of the school’s bursar and former engineer Tim Laker, they set about the task.

Explained Mr Laker: “The goal was to bring something to the people here that they had never had in all the generations of people living on this island: clean water. There was no rule book, no blueprints. We had to engineer the entire making of this from scratch. And this was no small project.

"The village representative consulted with us and decided that they wanted a single water tower for 5000 litres of water. Building a water tower is one thing but constructing a platform on Amazonian sediment to support over five tonnes of water is another. After unloading a boat of 2,100 clay brinks that we had sent down from Iquitos and carting them 1.7km through the jungle - plus over 1.2 tons of dry cement - we were totally exhausted… and ready to begin!

“All of that was before we were shown a hole in the ground off the beaten trail in the jungle through the mud and mosquitoes from where we were to haul sand back to the village. The students did it with such strength and determination that I was really proud of them. They didn’t stop there either. Straight after that, they spent two days mixing 5.5 cubic metres of cement with shovels and spades to build a platform strong enough to hold the 5 tons of water that needed to be supported on top.”

He added: “By the end of the task, two groups of entirely different people from the furthest parts of the globe had come together wonderfully to work on a project. And for the first time in the village’s history, there was clean water. The LOGS students were determined to make the project a success and they did. They learned so much and all said what an incredible experience it was.”

LOGS student Ella Prior said: “It was a huge privilege to be able to get involved in a project like this and feel like you have made a tangible difference to a group of people whom I would never have come into contact with normally. We were honoured to be welcomed into their village and it felt great to work all together as a team.”

LONG-FORGOTTEN schoolboys who fell fighting for their country in World War I were honoured on Friday (June 28), some for the first time, in a ceremony at Lewes Old Grammar School (LOGS) held 100 years to the day since the Treaty of Versailles was signed.

The school unveiled a poignant memorial – a Tommy statue showing an outline of a soldier with the rifle and helmet used and worn in the trenches - in its grounds, dedicated to the 14 boys who died in combat.

Attending the ceremony, along with the schools’ pupils, were The Deputy Lieutenant of East Sussex Miles Jenner, Lewes MP Maria Caulfield, the mayor of Lewes Cllr John Lamb along with representatives from the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment, the Royal Sussex Regimental Association, the Royal British Legion Cliffe (Lewes) Branch, the Royal Artillery and the Sussex Yeomanry Association.

Opening the ceremony, the Rev Richard Moatt said: “We dedicate this memorial to former pupils of Lewes Old Grammar School who came forward without question, accepted gladly and discharged fully their responsibilities during World War I. So let us mourn with pride those whom we have lost, but let us also remember with equal pride those serve and still live.”

Many of the LOGS school boys who went on to fight in WWI are not listed on the town’s memorial on School Hill and have remained anonymous until now. It was only after a five-year project by local author and historian Dr Graham Mayhew into the forgotten soldiers of Lewes who were never listed on the town memorial that more former LOGS soldiers’ names came to light.

Dr Mayhew explained: “The town clerk in Lewes asked me to carry out research into names of Lewes men who were not listed on the town’s WWI memorial which I was able to do thanks to the National Archives which put so much information online. There are 235 names on the memorial but I now have biographies of more than 370 local men so a good amount were missed off. That’s not unusual. In the days when the memorials were created, they depended on relatives submitting names. If relatives had died or moved away, they were not there to submit information about a loved one’s bravery in combat.”

“After getting names, I was able to identify which schools they went to by using archives from the Sussex Express which carried old stories about Lewes Old Grammar School children’s sports achievements and prizes and that helped to pinpoint their stories. It’s wonderful that the school is commemorating them – its also a great teaching resource for the children of LOGS to study what happened to their peers so many years ago.”

In a poignant dedication, head prefect Toby Murray read out the names of the LOGS boys who had lost their lives fighting and fellow head prefect Olivia Welsh lay a wreath. The Last Post was then played before a minute’s silence.

LOGS headmaster Robert Blewitt added: “We are incredibly proud to be able to honour these men who gave their lives fighting for their country particularly as some of them have not until now been recognised on the town’s memorial. I would like to thank Dr Mayhew for all his hard work and for bringing to light the bravery of all these local men. I hope that pupils at the ceremony take the time to reflect on their remarkable good fortune to be living in more peaceful times and appreciate the ultimate sacrifices that so many LOGS pupils made a century ago.

WHEN Chloe Kornevall went running alongside her dad at the age of nine with the incentive of an ice cream at the end, she had little idea that years later she would be considering a sparkling athletics career.

Now the Lewes Old Grammar School (LOGS) pupil, aged 15, is having the best athletics season of her life having recently won the Sussex Schools Championship 300m Intergirls category at the K2 track in Crawley, which qualified her to represent her county and race against Kent, Middlesex and Surrey.

She went on this week to win the 200m at the Independent Schools Association (ISA) final in Birmingham and take silver in the 300m.

Chloe, who lives in Lewes, is no stranger to running success. Last year, she also took the ISA National Schools gold in the 800m (the second time she has achieved this as she won it as a 12 year old as well) and – a huge achievement - the silver in the South of England Championships in the 400m. In 2017 in the ISA National Schools she took the silver in the 800m and bronze in the 200m and 2018 she took the silver in the 200m and 800m.

She explained: “It all started when I saw my dad, who was a top ten junior tennis player in Sweden when he was younger, go running on the farm we live at. I thought it looked fun and when he said I’d get an ice cream at the end, that really persuaded me to try it. Now I train six hours a week and one day I would like to compete at the Olympics.

Mum Victoria added: “Chloe works really hard in her sport and it’s lovely that it was her dad that started her running in the first place. As a tennis player, he used to train and compete with Swedish player Thomas Enqvist, who was ranked in the top five worldwide in the 90s, so I guess athleticism is in her genes!”

Chloe’s PE teacher at LOGS Catherine Hyland said: “Chloe is an inspirational athlete who really gives her sport her all and we are very proud of her and the LOGS’ team’s performance at the ISA finals in Birmingham. We know she will go far because she has a great attitude and is a real team player.”

A pupil from Lewes Old Grammar School and his family starred in a nail-biting BBC2 show with comedian Dara O’Briain which tested their intelligence, logic and brain power.

Rob Simmons, his dad Jason, sister Jane and grandad Ricky were described by Dara as one of the smartest families in the country after beating off hundreds of competing families to land a spot on the Family Brain Games, which aired mid-June.

Rob and his family took on another family from Scotland but were beaten in their first appearance. However, they could well be back later in the series as best-scoring runners up.

Said Rob, 12: “I’m the maths person in the team. The maths round was a big achievement for me, especially getting questions right against a maths teacher! There were real highs and lows though. It’s quite hard to get back on track after you get a question wrong - you’re under pressure and start to panic and at the start we were quite low and it wasn’t going well, but we pulled it back again. I do need to have a long lie down after the intense final round!

Dad Jason said: “Being part of The Family Brain Games has been an amazing experience for everyone and it’s great to be able to talk about that at last! Jane spotted the call for contestants online last year but we never expected to hear back. The selection process started with an online questionnaire and telephone interview. Our grey matter was tested at the next stage with maths, language and logic puzzles. This was first through a set of timed written papers – that was tough, like an exam at home - and then through a Skype audition which added the pressure of having to answer questions in front of the production team which was stressful!

“From the hundreds of applicants, we made it to a shortlist of 12 families. We were completely shocked when we received the call, and the next thing we knew a TV crew was setting up in our living room. They filmed us for a couple of days talking about our lives and interests, as well as setting up a mini-studio and subjecting us to the ‘Cognitron’.

“This was the first round of proper eliminations and was designed by Imperial College London to really test our mental capacity and agility, while staying calm under pressure. The questions came fast and it was impossible to answer them all. We must have done well (we were never told the actual result) because a week later we were arriving at the Discovery Centre in Kent and we were shaking with nervous excitement as we prepared for our first challenge in The Games Lab.”

“We are all so proud of each other. Every team member had their moment, and part of the show was learning our strengths and passing leadership to others when the time was right. Robert really excelled during the maths and logic puzzles and you can really see him grow in confidence as the series progresses. We didn’t expect to pass the initial selection test so to make it all… Well, actually, I’m not allowed to say, you’ll have to watch until the end.”