Sports and Recreation
Stirling is home to professional league teams in football, rugby and cricket. The senior football team, Stirling Albion, play in the Scottish Football League Second Division at their home ground of the Doubletree Dunblane Stadium. In July 2010, the Stirling Albion Supporters' Trust successfully took over the running of the club buying out the long-serving chairman, Peter McKenzie, after 14 months of campaigning. This made Stirling Albion the first fully owned community club in the history of British football, after previous attempts made by Manchester United, Liverpool and Rangers. Stirling County currently play in the Scottish Premiership Division One.
The athletics team Central Athletic Club are based at University of Stirling. Stirling Wanderers Hockey Club have also moved to a brand new (international standard) pitch at Forthbank for season 2008/09. Next to this pitch there is also the ground of Stirling County Cricket Club, whose pavilion captured an architectural award in June 2009, three years after its opening.
Scotland international footballers Billy Bremner, John Colquhoun, Duncan Ferguson, and brothers Gary and Steven Caldwell were born in Stirling. So were rugby internationals Kenny Logan, Allister Hogg and Alison McGrandles, jockey Willie Carson, and cricketer Dougie Brown.
Stirling is a major centre of sports training and education in Scotland. The headquarters of the Scottish Institute of Sport is a purpose-built facility on the campus of Stirling University, which opened in 2002. Also at the university is the Scottish National Swimming Academy, as well as the Gannochy National Tennis centre, which is seen as a tennis centre of excellence.
The university has a dedicated sports studies department, which was ranked amongst the best in the United Kingdom for its provision of sports facilities, with the maximum 5-star award, shared by 16 other universities in the UK. Stirling University also currently hosts the Scottish men's lacrosse champions.
Stirling and its surrounding area has a number of 9- and 18-hole golf courses, the largest of which is the Stirling Golf Course, located in the Kings Park area of the city. The Peak, a new Sports Village, was opened in April 2009 to cater for a range of sporting activities.
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Famous quotes containing the words sports and/or recreation:
“Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green;
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain;”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“Media mystifications should not obfuscate a simple, perceivable fact; Black teenage girls do not create poverty by having babies. Quite the contrary, they have babies at such a young age precisely because they are poor—because they do not have the opportunity to acquire an education, because meaningful, well-paying jobs and creative forms of recreation are not accessible to them ... because safe, effective forms of contraception are not available to them.”
—Angela Davis (b. 1944)