Club Chairman and Coach, Luke Williams, tells us how in only their third season, the Vale of Glamorgan-based set up may already be the largest female-only club in Wales, with up to 140 players from age 6 to Ladies.
How and when was the club born?
The club launched in April 2012 by a group of coaches already involved in the female game looking to create the first female-only club in the area. We felt that there was huge potential to grow the game locally given the lack of opportunities available at the time.
How has such fast growth been achieved?
The major factor behind our success is the amount of community opportunities we provide, particularly in primary and secondary schools. Initially we offered free after-school taster sessions during the summer of 2012 and used the Olympic games as a catalyst to help promote our opportunities.
As we started creating school / club links with the majority of primary and secondary schools in the area, we then took our provision a step further by setting up a primary schoolgirls league. This provided girls with an opportunity to represent their school playing small sided games in a non competitive environment with the key emphasis on having fun.
This has now been running for over two school years and has seen a total of 1,000+ attending with 20 schools taking part. In 2013/14 we further increased our provision by setting up a secondary school league for the 11-14 age groups which has also been greatly received.
In addition to the leagues, we hold an annual festival during the summer term and recently completed our 2014 event which saw a record 186 girls taking part aged 8-11 from 26 school teams. Schools can also benefit from paid training programmes where we can deliver 4-6 courses led by club coaches.
What methods would you recommend for other clubs looking to develop similarly?
Just like a business it’s about knowing who your customers are. In this case it’s women & girls and so we knew that we had to make inroads in providing school-based activities to raise awareness of the club. Schools we found are quite receptive when being offered a free activity and particularly for girls. We also contacted our local sport development team in the Vale of Glamorgan and they have been very supportive of our vision, assisting us with use school facilities for our festivals and school league matches.
The key factor in our experience is that a club coach is delivering all our sessions and not a paid coach without an attachment to a particular club. If a participant has a positive experience, they are far more likely to attend a club session. Also players and parents start talking about our opportunities and lots of players have come to us through this method. Also, I’d say look at local grant schemes for funding. In Wales we have a community chest grant scheme which is funded by Sport Wales and distributed by local sport development teams for new projects that get more people active, with women & girls currently being a priority area.
We also try and inspire our girls by offering great experiences for them whether it be watching matches or giving out awards. We took lots of our junior player to the Wales v England women’s international where we provided mascots, ball girls and flag bearers.
How did you manage to recruit recruiting sufficient coaches?
As the club has grown so quickly, recruiting enough coaches has always been the toughest challenge. The majority of the new additional coaches have come through parents, although we do have a number involved through advertising via websites and local press. One thing we do offer is to cover all coach education costs as it is vital to keep hold of volunteers given the time and effort they put it. We also encourage our senior players to complete their Level 1 course to give them potential career opportunities and allow them to coach with our junior teams.
What is your vision for the future?
Our ultimate goal is to continue to develop our thriving junior section to hopefully one day create a senior team to compete in the Welsh Premier League. We believe with our current setup and group of passionate coaches that this is an achievable target within the next 7-10 years, given that we have created the largest female junior section in South Wales, if not nationwide.
We have to ensure that as well as offering great opportunities for our players, that we back this up with continuous coach education support to provide the very best coaching standards.
Click here to see a Sport Wales promotional video for the club.
For more on the club, follow @ValeGirlsFC on twitter and see their website at www.valegirlsfc.co.uk
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