Pupils ‘devastated’ as vandals destroy their basketball posts

Members of Samares school year 6 basketball teams are despondent after their recently purchased basketball posts were damaged by vandals. Picture: JON GUEGAN

The equipment, which was only installed at the end of the summer term, was to have been used by all pupils from Year 3 upwards, but the Year 6 pupils had even been planning to set up a basketball club.

Deputy head teacher Victoria Pallot said: ‘They came to see me on Tuesday. They had printed out the basketball rules and put teams together, and the club was going to start next week. Now we can’t.’

She added: ‘They were something the children had wanted for quite a while. They are unusable – they are going to have to be scrapped.’

The new equipment had cost £499, with almost half the money raised by the Friends of Samarès and the rest coming from general school funds.

Mrs Pallot said: ‘The children are devastated. It is upsetting, especially because they had used their own initiative to set up the club. It was obviously something that they had taken a real interest in, now that we’re able to get back into more team sport.

‘It’s frustrating, because we had raised the money, they have been having PE lessons there, they had been practising the skills.’

The basketball posts had to be pre-ordered and Mrs Pallot explained that even if the funds were available any replacements could take around three months to arrive. ‘You can’t just get new ones next week,’ she said.

It is not the first time the primary school in St Clement has fallen victim to vandals. In the past teenagers have left cigarette butts and other rubbish on the synthetic pitch and destroyed football nets.

Mrs Pallot said: ‘Maybe now they will see and understand that their actions have consequences.’

Some of the vandalism of the basketball equipment was captured on CCTV and the footage has now been passed on to the States police.

Mrs Pallot added that if anyone wished to make a donation towards new posts they could contact the school on 735415.

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