Stirling Albion Junior Academy from the Scottish FA Central Region were delighted to receive an award of £500 from The SFP Trust’s 2019 Club Development Grant scheme. The initiative, funded by the SFP Trust in partnership with The Kilpatrick Fraser Charitable Trust, was developed to assist grassroots clubs in three specific areas – to increase participation by adding a new team to a club’s existing membership; to improve, enhance and sustain existing team activity through the purchase of new training equipment and/or funding First Aid training for coaches or thirdly to support Coach Education.
The Junior Academy will use their grant to help two of their coaches take the next step in their education pathway. Mark Carroll will undertake his C-Licence qualification whilst Ed Turnbull will go through his Children’s Award. This fantastic academy, which has 12 squads, 19 teams and 218 registered players over the age of six, operate with more than 70 registered officials, all of them dedicated volunteers with most of them being the parents of the young children. Additionally, they have a contingent of younger players in the Young Reds and Girls Section, bringing the total number of players to almost 240. Nicola Howieson, Stirling Albion Junior Academy chairperson, said she was “delighted” with the contribution from this initiative and added “We are hugely grateful for this funding since our ethos is all about bettering the coaching education and knowledge for our volunteers to make them the very best we can make them. This kind of positive investment is also of paramount importance to our players because it ensures they benefit from a higher quality of coaching. We want our Junior Academy to be synonymous with the best of standards within youth development and Awards like these certainly go a long way to help with this.”
