Maple Club is a multi-sport club in

Barbados Barbados, officially the Republic of Barbados, is an island country in the Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies and the easternmost island of the Caribbean region. It lies on the boundary of the South American ...

. Maple's

cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

team play in the

Barbados Cricket Association The Barbados Cricket Association is the ruling body for cricket in Barbados. The BCA was established in 1933 by an Act of Parliament to replace the Barbados Cricket Challenge Cup Committee, which had administered Barbadian cricket since its format ...

Division 1 championship. Maple is based in

Holetown Holetown (UN/LOCODE: BB HLT) is a small city located in the Caribbean island nation of Barbados. Holetown is located in the parish of Saint James on the sheltered west coast of the island. History In 1625, Holetown (formerly as St. James Town ...

, Saint James with the home ground at Trents playing fields. The club emblem is the maple leaf. Its colours have always been black and white with the green maple leaf emblem. The club motto is ''Palmam qui meruit ferat'' (Let him who deserves it win the prize). Since its first official sport was

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

and it expected to participate in other sports during 1959 and beyond, it did not name any sport in its official name. The name "Maple Club" was preferred over "Holetown Club" so as to invite participation of youngsters from other nearby districts.A fairly comprehensive early history of the Club is provided in pages 177 - 187 of "HOLETOWN BARBADOS, Settlement revisited", a book published in 2004 by the youngest founder member of Maple Club, Morris Greenidge. Maple Club was founded in 1958 by a group of young men, most of whom had been already members of the Holetown Methodist Men's Fellowship. The Reverend Kenneth G Swanston had been responsible for the formation of the Fellowship at the nearby Methodist Chapel, but when the Trents Social Centre was established in 1957, the Fellowship moved its meetings into the Centre. Thereafter, the young members who had played their various sports only at their respective schools and at the small, uneven Holetown Elementary School's play ground, invited retired Police Captain Eustace Simmons and former

West Indies The West Indies is an island subregion of the Americas, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island country, island countries and 19 dependent territory, dependencies in thr ...

cricketer George Carew, both Holetown residents, to be the senior mentors of the young club. At the inaugural meeting on 11 November 1958, Simmons became Founder President and Carew Founder Vice-President; first secretary was DaCosta Denny and Michael Simmons, son of the president, was elected first Treasurer. The first cricket captain was Luther Francis; first football captain was Michael Simmons and first netball captain was June Carew. Maple's first and only Patron was Hon. Ronald Tree who had been equerry to Sir

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 (Winston Churchill in the Second World War, ...

during World War II and who had built a home in Holetown immediately after the War. It was Tree who bought the four acre sugar cane field from Trents Plantation and gave it to the people of Holetown in perpetuity so that the "young men of the village could have somewhere to express themselves through sports". Within five years of its founding Maple was dominant at ladies

netball Netball is a ball sport played on a rectangular court by two teams of seven players. The primary objective is to shoot a ball through the defender's goal ring while preventing the opposing team from shooting through their own. It is one of a ...

, at cricket and was climbing into the higher divisions of local football; it had also embarked on ladies

field hockey Field hockey (or simply referred to as hockey in some countries where ice hockey is not popular) is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with 11 players in total, made up of 10 field players and a goalk ...

. By 1964 Maple had produced professional cricketers in John Shepherd, (

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

and

Keith Boyce Keith David Boyce (11 October 1943 – 11 October 1996) was a cricketer who played 21 Tests and 8 One Day Internationals for the West Indies between 1971 and 1976. He was a member of the squad that won the 1975 Cricket World Cup. Boyce was the f ...

(

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

and West Indies), Wycliffe Phillips (

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...

and

), Glenroy Sealy (

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

) and Malcolm McKenzie (Scotland). Maple also won the first

limited overs cricket Limited overs cricket, also known as white ball cricket, is a version of the sport of cricket in which a match is generally completed within one day. There are a number of formats, including List A cricket (8-hour games), Twenty20 cricket (3-h ...

competition played in Barbados, the E. W. Swanton Cup, before limited overs became popular or official in the Caribbean. The club celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2009. Maple won the inaugural BCA

Twenty20 Twenty20 (abbreviated T20) is a shortened format of cricket. At the professional level, it was introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 for the county cricket, inter-county competition. In a Twenty20 game, the two t ...

competition in 2008 and went on to compete in the 2009 West Indies Players' Association Twenty20 Club Champions League in

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger, more populous island of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the country. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is the southernmost island in ...

. Their last Division 1 championship was in 1992. Notable cricketers from Maple in recent years include

Kemar Roach Kemar Andre Jamal Roach (born 30 June 1988) is a Barbadian people, Barbadian international cricketer who plays for the West Indies cricket team, West Indies in Test cricket, Test and One Day Internationals. As a pacer, Roach initially reached s ...

Kirk Edwards Kirk Anton Edwards (born 3 November 1984) is a West Indies former international cricketer. He played as a right-handed batsman, domestically mainly for Barbados. Domestic career In May 2018, he was selected to play for the Windward Islands nat ...

and Barrington Yearwood.

References

{{reflist Cricket teams in Barbados 1958 establishments in Barbados Sports clubs and teams established in 1958