Chappell moving on after four successful years in Devon as community coach

COMMUNITY cricket coach Scott Chappell has moved on to a new post in Somerset after a job well done in Devon.

Chappell, 31, has been the South Devon Community coach working in schools and with clubs for nearly five year.

Somerset Cricket Board have lured Chappell away to be their new youth development manager, based at the County Ground in Taunton.

It’s a new challenge and one Chappell is well equipped for following his time with the Devon Cricket Board.

Chappell may be looking forward to his new job, but there parts of the old one he will remember fondly for a long time.

“He said: “One of the best bits was going into schools and having excited children come up asking ‘ have we got cricket today Mr Chappell’.

“If children are looking forward to their cricket sessions that much, we must have been doing something right.”

Chappell was based at South Dartmoor College in Ashburton, working with schools in the Dartmoor Schools’ Sports Partnership.

It was a big patch – taking Chappell from Newton Abbot to Teignmouth, Chudleigh, Totnes, Dartington and Chudleigh – and brought him into contact with thousands of children.

“I must have coached 12,000 children across the schools, and done coach education for at least a hundred teachers and another hundred young leaders,” said Chappell.

“I stated with children at keystage one and went through to schools years four to six.

“A lot of the work was centred round the Chance2Shine programme and building links with local clubs.

“My job wasn’t to coach at clubs, but to encourage children to get down to clubs and continue their cricket careers there.”

Chappell ran 12 schools festivals during his time as community coach, the final one at Forches Cross, Newton Abbot last summer.

Chappell helped bring cricket out of the shadows at South Dartmoor College, working with teachers there to get boys’ and girls’ teams established.

South Dartmoor teams won six Devon finals at different age groups in 2015 and that was just the start of it.

“We took teams to eight national finals over the past few years and won three of them - including two Chance2Shine tournament this year,” said Chappell.

One of the last things Chappell did before leaving was help set up the new cricket academy at South Dartmoor, which launched at the start of the autumn term.

Chappells new role with Somerset is a promotion – and means a lot less hands-on coaching.

“I will miss working with the kids, which I really enjoyed,” said Chappell.

“My role is too oversee Chance2Shine in Somerset, disability cricket, community coaches – the staffers and the part-timers – and the commercial coaching programme.

“Somerset is a big county and I will have my hands full looking after it.”