Staff from a South Derbyshire school have started their attempt at smashing a world record. Teachers from Woodville Schools Federation are aiming to play French boules for 53 hours non-stop, as part of their plans to build a new school in Nepal.
Woodville Infants and Junior School teachers Craig Liddle, Carly Seaman-Peake, Danny Goodridge and PE sports coach Alex Garner will be taking on the challenge to smash the Guinness World Record for the longest time the game has been played.
Pupils and staff from the federation have spent the last few months celebrating the school’s 100 anniversary, raising money to build the new school after the previous one was destroyed in the 2015 Nepal earthquake.
Children and parents have been sponsoring the boules, which began on Wednesday, July 12 and will run until Friday, July 14. Then they should have completed the whopping 53 hours of play.
Year Two teacher Craig Liddle said: “We wanted to help with the fund-raising and wanting to attempt a world record but didn’t know which one. One of the children I teach had a world record book and had to put in Post-it notes of records we could attempt. Some of them would be impossible and we wanted something we think we could achieve.”
The school has been sharing all of its fund-raising success on its social media accounts with the hashtag #Woodville100.
What is French boules?
Boules is a collective name for a wide range of games in which the objective is to throw or roll heavy balls (called boules in France, and bocce in Italy) as close as possible to a small target ball.
Today, some boules sports (e.g. bocce) still use wooden (or epoxy composite) balls, while others (such as pétanque) use metal balls. Petanque is a throwing game using metal balls, but there is no run-up. Players' feet must remain firmly on the ground.
The wooden balls used in bocce tend to be bigger than the smaller (but denser) metal balls used in petanque.
