LOW Furness and St James broke the years of Victoria Academy dominance to claim victory in the Furness Schools Tri-Golf finals.

The two schools tasted triumph in the Years 3/4 and Years 5/6 events respectively at Hoops, as the top teams from across the borough converged for competition.

The top five schools in each age group took part in the finals, having taken part in coaching sessions with PGA professional Paul Rawlinson and come through qualifying events at their own schools.

The competition was organised differently to last year.

Instead of having Years 3 and 4 in the morning and Years 5 and 6 in the afternoon, all the teams came together for one bumper afternoon session.

All the teams take part in eight mini games that test their putting and chipping ability, power and accuracy.

On each station – with cones laid out to be hit and targets to be found among them – the teams have a two-minute practice and then five minutes where they have to score as many points as possible.

Once the five minutes is up, and after much frantic activity, shouting and encouragement, they move on to the next game and repeat the process.

In Years 3/4, Low Furness overcame a strong challenge from Victoria Academy – who have a strong record in the competition going back several years, and who have claimed the overall county crown on a number of occasions.

The champions totalled 1,271 points, with Victoria in second on 1,139. Yarlside Academy, Dane Ghyll and Ormsgill made up the teams in the event.

In the Year 5/6 age group, St James won with a massive score of 1,628. However, as the majority of their team are unable to attend the county finals in Carlisle, the team in second, Yarlside – who scored 1,554 – will represent Furness at the Cumbria School Games.

Yarlside just pipped Victoria Academy to the honour, as they scored 1,551 in third.

St Paul’s and St George’s were the other two teams to take part, with more than 100 children in total competing across the two age groups.

Furness School Games organiser Oliver Carswell was pleased to see the event go so well, and said: “This is always one of my favourite competitions. For the entire time the children are playing, they have a smile on their faces.

“In other sports, it is really easy to tell who is winning and losing, but during Tri-Golf you have no idea until everyone has finished playing all eight games.”

He added: “The competition ran really well, thank to Paul Rawlinson and Mrs Thornton, from Dowdales, who were overseeing the young leaders from Furness Academy and Dowdales, whose job it was to describe and demonstrate the games, scoring accurately as well.

“They did a tremendous job considering some of the students are only in Year 9. They are a credit to themselves and their schools.”