Stanhope Primary dodgeball team reaches Britain’s top 20 at nationals

Stanhope Primary’s dodgeball team finished among Britain’s top 20 at the National Finals in Kettering after a 2-2-2 group record left it narrowly missing the quarterfinals. The run came at Kettering Arena on Friday, July 3, 2026, and the school said the squad included A Rogers as it handled a 5:30 a.m. start and more than four hours of travel before taking the court.

That near miss only sharpened the scale of what Stanhope achieved. The team had already climbed through three qualifying rounds, first becoming South Tyneside champions, then Tyne and Wear champions and then North of England champions, before booking a fifth appearance at the National Finals. Earlier in the season, Stanhope won all of its group games at the Northern Regional Dodgeball Finals on June 4 and beat Blakehill of Manchester 8-4 in the final to secure the trip to Kettering.

The national stage showed how tight the margins are once schools reach the last cut. Stanhope won two, drew two and lost two in group play, a record that put it just outside the quarterfinal places but still inside the final 20 schools in Britain. For a primary-school side, that matters because the pathway is built to sift a large field down through county, regional and national rounds, and British Dodgeball’s school structure has expanded from 28 county primary championships in 2022/23 to 33 county events in 2023/24.

Stanhope’s latest finish also fits a pattern rather than a one-off surge. The school said its 2025 team reached the National Finals in Stoke for a fourth consecutive appearance and lost in extra time in the quarterfinals, underlining how often the programme has been able to stay in the national conversation. This year’s group-stage campaign did not quite produce another knockout berth, but the combination of a long travel day, a difficult finals field and another top-20 finish points to a programme that keeps arriving prepared, together and within touching distance of the last eight.