Grace's Netball Court

For pictures of Grace's netball court please visit: Grace's Netball Court Consturction on Facebook

To see the court in use for Lilongwe Love festival please visit: Lilongwe Love Photos on Facebook

To learn more about Grace please visit: GraceMatilda.org

Visit Grace's fundraising page here: Grace's Fundraising Page on Just Giving

All visitors and volunteers to see the court in Malawi are welcome at any time!

Grace Matilda Hadman

Grace Matilda Hadman was born on 3rd June 1991 to Carol and Bill, she has three older brothers, Robert, Jasper and William.

Grace loved maths, biology and art. With a particular talent for sport, Grace swam for Oxfordshire, gaining her colours and excelling in all strokes. She won a silver medal in the IAPS Nationals for the Dragon and was awarded the best swimmer of her year. A strong rower, Grace represented the Dragon, winning two Ergo cups and later went on to row in the Schools Nationals for St Edward’s. She consistently played in the first teams for rounders, hockey and netball. She gained her colours in hockey for Oxfordshire.

Tragically Grace died in a car accident in Oxfordshire on 7th April 2009. She was only 17 and was studying A level Art, Maths and Biology at Teddies.

One of Grace’s final and proudest achievements took place towards the end of her last term when she was voted by her teams, 'the most improved player of the year' for both hockey and netball. She was presented with an engraved glass mug for hockey and t-shirt for netball. In the summer term, her parents collected on Grace’s behalf an engraved plate at the school sports dinner, for the ‘Most Improved Sportswoman of the Year’.

Grace was especially keen to support small charities and in her memory friends and family pledged to build a netball court in her name. Her brother Jasper ran a 79 mile ultra marathon to raise funds and her friends Chloe and Ulrika visited the Lingadzi Academy site as well as raising some money. 

Grace's brother Jasper: "My sister Grace adored netball – she played Goal Attack in her school 1st VII. She was always a determined sportswoman; not long before she died in a car accident in 2009, her school created a special prize – the Most Improved Sportsperson Award – to reward her efforts. She was so proud of this achievement that she wouldn’t even rise to teasing about how bad she must have been to start with. Now she is to receive another truly remarkable honour – it’s the reason I’m doing this 79-mile ultramarathon along Dorset’s Jurassic Coast." 

Grace's Netball Court

Building Malawi has created a netball centre in memory of Grace. It features a 60m x 40m tree lined space with 1 hard court netball and 2 grass netball courts. A large thatch building which has a stage and changing rooms has also been constructed and provides a shaded space to meet as well as a viewing platform for the netball and across the whole city. Grace's Netball Court will be decorated with Grace's art work and be a place for the girls to meet socially, as well as being used for drama productions and an annual rock festival called Lilongwe Love.

"We see all the elements as part of Grace's memory and have used the money donated to Building Malawi from the Mad Hatters Tea Party and the sales of Grace's Print, money that was donated by Francis, along with Jasper and boys' marathon money to fund the thatch, hard surface courts and soon will pay for the netball posts and balls etc.

It sounds quite normal to have a netball court but the venue is the first of its kind in Malawi. The whole site 'Lingadzi Academy' is already the largest sports venue in the whole country! Grace's court will be the first free to use hard surface netball court in the whole country! Crazy hey!

Already two of Grace's friends have visited the site; all offers of netball coaching will always be welcome!"

If you'd like to visit the netball court or ask us a question please do here: Contact Building Malawi


Hundreds of Photos from Lingadzi Academy Now On Facebook!

Friday 14th December 2012

Hi everyone, Building Malawi has been extremely fortunate to welcome many visitors and volunteers to Lingadzi Academy in Malawi. These wonderful folk have posted photos to our Facebook Page. Please check them out here: https://www.facebook.com/BuildingMalawi/photos_stream Be sure to like us on Facebook too! We would love it if you could visit Lingadzi Academy. We do not charge our volunteers. For more information check out our Volunteers page here: http://www.buildingmalawi.com/volunteer.html Best wishes from the entire team at Building Malawi! [caption id="attachment_103" align="alignnone" width="301" caption="Kids at Lingadzi Academy earlier this year"]Kids at Lingadzi Academy earlier this year[/caption]

 
 

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