DIRECTOR OF SPORT ANNOUNCEMENT
We are delighted to announce that Hillcrest High School Director of Sport Grant Bradburn has been appointed as the new Head Coach of the Pakistan Men’s Cricket Team. Bradburn had previously been the Fielding Coach for Pakistan 2018-2019 and Head of High Performance Coaching 2019-2020. Mr Bradburn has been granted a year’s leave of absence and finishes in the role as of Wednesday 5th April.
Over the previous 15 months Mr Bradburn has been responsible for implementing our new sports strategy which is aimed at ‘Raising our Game’. Hillcrest High School has a proud sporting and academic history. The school is renowned for producing well balanced young people and offers a large variety of sports for students to choose from. We believe engaging in sport helps our students foster interpersonal skills, intelligence, emotional confidence and social skills, striving towards creativity and development of key attributes of grit, determination and perseverance.
Bradburn said “It has been an honour and privilege to work alongside you all here at Hillcrest High School. I have learned so much in this challenging role, but at the same time I’ve enjoyed that challenge of serving our young adults to be the best version of themselves. I look forward to watching and supporting continued progress here at Hillcrest High, as we strive to raise our game. I am very grateful to the school for allowing me to take leave and pursue this next chapter of coaching Pakistan. Ironically my 1st series in charge is vs New Zealand, so hopefully now you will be supporting both teams:)”.
Now one year into our Raising our Game Action Plan, we are very proud of the progress towards our stated outcomes.
Mr Bradburn along with Mr Kennedy and Mr Blignaut has also made huge improvements to our school cricket programme which has resulted in some impressive results and development in skill.
We are pleased to announce that we have appointed Mr. Ben Kennedy as our acting Director of Sport for the next 12 months. Mr Kennedy has a long history at Hillcrest High School having taught PE for the last 20 years and leading the sports development programme for 10 years. He has also been the teacher in charge of cricket, rugby and skiing over the years as well as coaching both girls and boys First XI cricket and the First XV rugby. Mr Kennedy also has a high performance background in cricket having been the performance analyst for both Northern Districts and New Zealand Cricket. “I’m really excited about picking up from the excellent work that Mr Bradburn, along with Mr Fleming, has undertaken over the last 15 months with a view to Raising Our Game and offering sporting programmes that are going to contribute to developing true all round students at Hillcrest High School”.
We wish Mr Bradburn all the best in his new role in Pakistan and look forward to seeing their progress as they build to the ICC World Cup.
