Netball Training Srssion

Half-Term Holiday Club

(12th – 16th February 2007)

Local Leagues, Birchfield Community School, and The King Edwards Aston partnership worked together to deliver a holiday club to the local children of Aston between the ages of 7 – 11 during the half-term. We offered the children 4 hours of intensive quality coaching each day in a variety of sports. The sports covered were football, cricket, basketball, netball, tag rugby, gymnastics, hockey and multi-skills.

During the week we had specialised sessions for girls and boys, i.e. one day was girls only football and another was girls only cricket with the other children participating in different sports simultaneously. The attendance at the club was hampered a little by the snow but we had 30 registrations by the end of the week with 50% of these being girls.

Girls Netball at Birchfield

As a culmination of the activities that Local Leagues had been running in individual schools, a one-day event was organised at Nechells Sports Centre for girls in years 5 and 6. There were 11 schools participating, competing in football, basketball, tag rugby, and trying out aerobics. The girls had an opportunity to compete against girls of their own age and ability and were inspired to continue to play sport and learnt more about healthy lifestyles. The schools were invited from the various wards of Birmingham with a view of increasing social integration between different community groups throughout the city with a primary focus on ethnic minority groups.

A key aim of Local Leagues is to provide sustainability for the activities we initiate within schools. One way we would like to see this happen is for schools to arrange matches between themselves and build links with other schools through our other events such as the Fit4Sport day on the 23rd March 2007. At this event, school staff had an opportunity to network with other teachers and discover what other schools are doing in terms of sports. This helped them to discover how they can work together to maintain the girls’ interest in sport that has developed over the previous 6 months through Local Leagues activities.