Maple Club is a multi-sport club in

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate) ...

. Maple's

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

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, 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 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 a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...

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 Arthur Ronald Lambert Field Tree (26 September 1897 – 14 July 1976) was a British Conservative Party politician, journalist and investor who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Harborough constituency in Leicestershire from 1933 t ...

who had been equerry to Sir

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...

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 court by two teams of seven players. It is among a rare number of sports which have been created exclusively for female competitors. The sport is played on indoor and outdoor netball courts and is specifical ...

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

field hockey Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting ...

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

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

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 died from the effects of chronic cirrhosis of the liver, while sitting in a c ...

(

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

and West Indies), Wycliffe Phillips (

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

and

), Glenroy Sealy (

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

) and Malcolm McKenzie (Scotland). Maple also won the first limited overs cricket 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 (T20) is a shortened game format of cricket. At the professional level, it was introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 for the inter-county competition. In a Twenty20 game, the two teams have a single inn ...

competition in 2008 and went on to compete in the 2009

West Indies Players' Association The West Indies Players' Association (WIPA) is the representative body for professional cricketers from the Caribbean nations that constitute the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB). As the exclusive representative and bargaining agent of players sel ...

Twenty20 Club Champions League in

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

. 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 international cricketer who plays for the West Indies. He played in the 2006 U-19 Cricket World Cup in Sri Lanka and has represented the West Indies in Test and One Day International c ...

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 nati ...

and Barrington Yearwood.

References

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