Gresham's School - School Sports

School Sports

Apart from its sports grounds for cricket, rugby football, hockey, and soccer, the school has its own indoor swimming pool, squash, tennis and badminton courts, gymnasium and extensive school woods. It owns a boat-house at Barton Broad and a shooting lodge at Bisley, as well as a shooting range at the school.

The principal school sports for boys are rugby (Michaelmas Term), hockey (Lent Term), and cricket (Summer Term). There is a wide range of other school sports, including tennis, badminton, soccer, squash, golf, martial arts, swimming, riding, sailing, cross-country running, shooting and canoeing. As an alternative to formal sports, Gresham's students may take part in 'School Works', chiefly forestry activities in the woodland attached to the main school campus.

An Old Greshamian, Richard Leman, was a member of the gold-medal winning British hockey squad at the 1988 Summer Olympics and of the bronze-medal winning team at the 1984 Summer Olympics. Another OG, Gawain Briars, was the British number one squash player and now heads the world Professional Squash Association. Brother and sister Ralph and Natasha Firman are both racing drivers, and Natasha was the winner of the inaugural Formula Woman championship in 2004. Giles Baring and Andrew Corran were first-class cricketers, while international rugby footballers include Andy Mulligan (Ireland and the British and Irish Lions, Nick Youngs and his sons Ben and Tom (England). In rifle-shooting, Gresham's has been one of the top ten schools in England for about sixty years, and Glyn Barnett won a shooting Gold Medal in the 2006 Commonwealth Games at Melbourne. In the field of winter sports, the 11th Earl of Northesk took an Olympic medal for toboganning (then called 'skeleton') in 1928. Notable mountaineers have included Tom Bourdillon, Percy Wyn-Harris, Peter Lloyd and Matthew Dickinson.