Patina’s popular football tournament fundraiser was back at the Dripping Pan, Lewes

This is the eighth year Patina have put on this popular fundraiser at the hallowed grounds of Lewes FC. The tournament was so popular this year that it sold out in 24 hours!

Patina (Parents and Teachers in the Arts) was set up in 2001 to create new opportunities for children and teachers to work directly with local professional artists and to run celebratory arts events that bring benefit to the whole community. We raise funds, coordinate artists, promote and advocate for the arts and support parents and teachers which culminates in the production of the Moving On parade. In its 21st year the Moving On parade celebrates Year 6 children finishing Primary School and moving onto Secondary School.

Teams were invited to come up with names inspired by this year’s Moving On theme of ‘All the World’s a Stage.’ Inspiration was drawn from plays, musicals, pantos and performances. We had some brilliant team names including, To Be Or Not To Be United, Three Lions-King FC and As You Strike It.

The Dream Team tournament is run as an inclusive event for 10 and 11 year old girls and boys and teams are made up of friendship groups from across the area.

The fundraiser stands proudly alongside Lewes FC’s women’s team and their Equality FC campaign. The teams who competed on 4th May were made up of both girls and boys. When the Dream Team tournament started back in 2015 people were sceptical that the teams would be able to find girls to play but boy were they proved wrong! Last year 6 girls were even scouted for local football teams.

140 Lewes children took part in the tournament. The games were refereed and the scores were kept by 12 students from Priory School who did such a professional job. We had four pitches on the Dripping Pan where each group played each other. The nail-biting final between The Chips FC and The Rapids FC ended in a penalty shoot-out and the winning team, The Rapids FC were presented with the Patina Dream Team trophy and individual medals by Cllr Shirley-Anne Sains, the Mayor of Lewes, to rounds of cheers and whoops.

The children of the Lewes Percussion/Samba group popped down to the Dripping Pan and created some amazing music for our footballers and spectators. Many thanks to the musicians and Grant Allardyce from Create Music for coming along.

We are grateful to all the volunteers who came to help make the tournament such a success and in particular, Sauro Scarpelli for organising the groups and for overseeing the matches, Priory PE teacher Tim Warren for organising the Priory School sports leaders to be our referees, time keepers and scorekeepers and Andie Capie for being our wonderful MC. We are also indebted to Lewes FC for lending us the Dripping Pan for the afternoon, what a venue!

“What a brilliant, fun tournament. All the kids had a brilliant time, and was so well organised. We made it through to the semi-finals, and thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. We even got a rainbow over the Dripping Pan at one point.” Tim Milner, team manager of ‘As You Strike It’ FC

The 2023 Moving On Parade takes place in Lewes from 12.30pm on Friday 7th July with an evening event in The Paddock from 7-10pm.