Our Community Development Manager Matt Cuss looks back at what has been a busy start to the school year for London Skolars Community Department.
From September our focus has solely been on Primary & Secondary School work, as we took a year away from our College Academy project. With the help of our Sky Try funding, and the support of our valued sponsors Ipreo and Exchange Data International, we were able to connect with more young people than ever.
In figures we have delivered to:
- 8 Schools Rugby Provision
- 220 regular pupils every week
- A total of 112 hours of coaching over the term.
- 240 children at a one off Festival
On top of our regular school’s programmes, we have delivered alongside Tottenham’s Sport-Inspired programme on a one-off engagement day, which saw 240 children experience Rugby League over the course of the day. We have received funding from Tottenham Grammar School to help deliver a ‘Girls Rugby Project’ which will be invaluable in building on our initial interest that we kick-started last season. We are also speaking to a number of exciting new partner companies, who all are interested in getting involved and helping us to expand our delivery resources.
From a staffing point of view, it’s been fantastic to be able to welcome our Community Coach Apprentice Aston Stephenson into the department, his infectious enthusiasm and fantastic coaching ability has produced great reviews from our partner schools and his hard-work out in the field is making a big difference to young people and sport in Haringey. We are also in the final processes of recruiting a Player Recruitment & Development Officer, who will be tasked with focusing on recruitment for our College Academy for 2017, the majority of their work will be around Secondary Schools and then bridging the gap between school and club participation.
Our Juniors although out of regular season have also been producing some highlights. Our U17’s who many of you would have read lots about over the past season, have just been nominated in the ‘Team of the Year’ category at the Haringey Celebrating Sport Awards which will take place in November. It’s fantastic to see their efforts being recognised outside of the Rugby League community. Our Strength and Conditioning programme, set up for our U15’s & U17’s players has also been a great success. Each week the players have worked on age appropriate strength and conditioning methods under the watchful eye of qualified Personal Trainer and First Team player Kaz Faturoti. We hope that this will bear fruit come the Junior League season.
Alongside this, after Half-Term we will launch our Skolars Performance Squad, a vital piece in our pathway model. Promising players from our U13’s, U15’s and U17’s will come together once a month, to work with First Team and Academy coaches on core aspects of performance. We hope this will not only improve them as individuals, but that we will see a collective improvement through our Junior Teams also.
As you can see it’s been a busy few months for us, with lots going on. As always we say thank you to our wonderful sponsors, our partner schools and of course to the children for being fantastic throughout every session we have delivered. We look forward to the next term with even more schools and even more young people engaging with us here at London Skolars.
