The Eagles comfortably took top spot, finishing with a total of 253,538 points – 135,836 more than Fulham in second place – at the end of the two-week spelling competition, which Sarah Moris, Relationships Manager at LiteracyPlanet, likened to the popular game, Boggle
“Students are given a set of lettered tiles, and try and make as many words as they can. We have a points-per-student leaderboard to make it fair for the clubs that might not have the same number of students.”
Discussing it’s growth, Sarah said: “It all started in Australia; that’s where the first Word Mania competition and from there it just picked up speed.
“Australia and New Zealand still have their own Word Mania competition in January. Whereas the global competition runs in October and November.
“And we then gave the Premier League their own competition because we know how competitive all the teams can be!”
Martin Prickett, Head of Education at Palace’s Academy, praised the impact of Word Mania on the schoolboys at Palace’s training centre down in Beckenham:
“If you’re a good learner on the pitch and in the classroom you’re going to have success in life.
“From what we see across our tracking, the evidence is that the boys in our programme are working to the best of their ability in school and that is terrific news for all our young players.”