DORCHESTER star Tara Chittenden kicked off the new season in style by leading her team to gold at the Sainsbury’s 2015 School Games.

Chittenden joined 1,600 other competitors in Manchester over the weekend for the UK’s largest multi-sport event for elite level, school-age athletes.

The Thomas Hardye School pupil was representing England White girls over the four-day long competition, and was picked as one of three captains in the team.

They put in a number of impressive performances to progress all the way to Sunday’s final where they faced reigning champions Scotland.

And Chittenden, 17, and her team were celebrating at the final whistle, having held their nerve to record a 3-1 triumph to take the title.

“It’s absolutely amazing to win, we’ve really come together as a squad over the past four days,” said Chittenden, who plays for Bournemouth Hockey Club.

“We really put it all out on the pitch, we can say that we’ve done ourselves proud and we’re represented team England Whites well. It’s amazing.

“We’d been looking at a lot of the Scotland team’s tactics, we had been seeing how we could get into their D and score lots of goals. I think we’ve done really well in what we did. We’d never played together before really, we had some training sessions but the girls have done so well, I’m so proud of them.

“As a squad we decided we wanted a leadership team, I captained it mainly on Thursday, and then the other girls took over on the other days. But we’ve been making sure everyone is ok, keeping the banter going.”

The Sainsbury’s 2015 School Games, which is supported by National Lottery funding from Sport England and delivered by the Youth Sport Trust, featured 12 different sports across four days.

And having got a taste of a multi-sport competition, Chittenden is already setting her sights high for the coming season.

“I want to try and get into England Under-18 squad this season and play at the Euros and this is going to help with giving me a boost ahead of the big competitions, it’s just been an amazing experience, I’ve never been to a place like this before,” she added.

“We got to watch some cycling yesterday and it’s amazing to see so many athletes doing well.”

The Sainsbury’s 2015 School Games is supported by a range of partners including the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Sport England, Youth Sport Trust, Department of Health and British Paralympic Association. The Games were held in venues across Manchester from 3-6 September 2015. Visit www.2015schoolgames.com for more information.