{"id":314931,"date":"2026-02-28T16:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T16:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/314931\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T16:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T16:04:10","slug":"school-to-introduce-hockey-after-new-pitch-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/314931\/","title":{"rendered":"School to introduce hockey after new pitch funding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img alt=\"A school building seen from outside. A sign can be seen for Grove School in a grassy landscaped area. It is a three story building. There is blue cladding below windows on the bottom floor.\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"569\" height=\"320\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/2188b949e6e072adca7fe63691722ff9.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The new full-size artificial grass pitch will be the first of its kind in the town [Shropshire Council]<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">A secondary school is to introduce hockey to its curriculum after \u00a3350,000 in funding was secured for a full-size artificial hockey pitch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The Astroturf pitch planned for the Grove School in Market Drayton, Shropshire, could also be used for football, tennis, netball and cricket, the council said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The new facility, which is the first of its kind in the town, will also provide a local training ground for Market Drayton Hockey Club.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;The hope is that this will lead to the club having junior teams, as well as encouraging more adult residents of Market Drayton to join the club,&#8221; said Shropshire councillor James Owen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Currently club members have to travel to Keele, Lilleshall or Whitchurch to use a suitable full-size pitch.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The funding has come from community infrastructure levy money from developers working on building projects in the area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">It is hoped work will begin later in the year once additional funding is achieved.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Follow BBC Shropshire on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sounds\/curation\/p0cjdy99?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Byahoo.north.america%5D-%5Blink%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:BBC Sounds;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">BBC Sounds<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/bbcshropshire\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Facebook;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Facebook<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/BBCShropshire\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:X;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">X<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/bbcshropshire\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Instagram;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Instagram<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>More stories like thisRelated internet links<script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new full-size artificial grass pitch will be the first of its kind in the town [Shropshire Council]&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[157448,157450,157449,85,46,157447,157451,157446,105],"class_list":["post-314931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-astroturf-pitch","tag-grove-school","tag-hockey-pitch","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-market-drayton","tag-secondary-school","tag-shropshire-council","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}