‘The purpose of The Scottish Football Partnership’s Growing the Game Award is to assist Scottish FA Quality Mark clubs add one new team to their playing membership. The funding provided assists with the start-up cost of a new team and is delivered in conjunction with the Regional Football Development staff. This ambitious pilot project aims to create 60 new Grassroots teams during the 2014/15 season’.
Holytown Colts Youth F.C. (Central Region )
Girls U-6 to U-8 section
50 new players created
2 new Coaches
Fun 4’s format of the game
Club President Steven Hastie said “Since Holytown Colts Youth Club received the Grant from The Scottish Football Partnership we have started work in creating a new girls section within our Club and for the local community. The financial support received allowed us to advertise for 2 new female coaches to look after our new Girls Section, buy the appropriate training kit such as balls, cones, bibs etc and initiate work within our local community. The way we have achieved this has been by working in partnership with North Lanarkshire Councils Active Schools programme and delivering lunch time clubs within the local primarily schools targeting girls under the age of 9. We have been in dialogue with the 8 local schools within our catchment area with a view to providing taster sessions within the schools on a weekly basis. We have received a very positive response from the schools and the children who have been very enthusiastic when we are in the schools delivering the lunch-time fun fours. We also ran a festival at Keir Hardie sports centre for local schools and had over 50 girls on site who had an absolutely fantastic time. The numbers were down slightly on that expected due to the inclement weather and some last minute cancellations. Also in attendance were Stephen Hamilton and Kerry Kennedy from the Scottish FA who would no doubt testify to the fun enjoyed by all. We fully appreciate the support given by the Scottish Football Partnership without which the above would have been very difficult to deliver for the young girls of our Community as the Club’s resources are limited. So once again thank you very much for your support”.