Youngsters have won an inter-schools tournament without meeting any of the other teams.

The annual Foursquare competition, open to all schools in the south east of England, has been going for more than 10 years and there have been many schools from Gravesend who have held the trophy aloft - including Bronte, Wrotham Road, Culverstone and Westcourt plus Copperfield in 2019.

But this is the first year the inter-school competition has been won without a team meeting the others.

Covid restrictions meant that pupils could not be brought together for the playground game so instead of competing against other schools, each one was set a different challenge of co-operating and trying to accumulate the highest number of passes within the grid.

This year, it was Copperfield Academy's turn to take the title again.

More than 20 teams from 12 primary schools were up for the challenge but Copperfield stormed through with Year 6 managing a record of 301 in three minutes and Year 5 hitting 275. St John's primary school also did well, finishing as runners-up but also the most improved.

Organiser Jason Owen said: "I'm sure we'll bring all the schools back together again next year but after the success of the co-operation challenge, we might have to make the inter-school competition a dual event with inter-school competition and the co-op challenge running alongside each other - Copperfield will be tough to beat in both!"

Foursquare is a ball game played among four players on a square court divided into quadrants. Players bounce the ball into their opponent's quadrant and a player is eliminated if they are unable to touch the ball and pass it onto another quadrant.

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