Blackpool FC Community Trust: A new year but the same packed programme

We are looking forward to continuing our girls’ football sessions, which were very popular throughout 2023.

From January 2-5, we will be running our girls’ Football Camps for seven to 14-year-olds, which have grown to record-breaking numbers in the last year.

These camps will cover a wide range of topics and games, including warm-ups, structured coaching sessions – covering shooting, dribbling, passing and control – as well as fun games and lots of matches.

We will also be resuming the Monday night Future Lioness Development Centres and Girls Goalkeeper Development Centres.

These sessions offer high quality structured coaching sessions aimed at girls who play for any team, who want to have an extra training session each week with our qualified coaches.

These are for more experienced players aged U8-14, and are one of the sessions we use to identify potential players for the girls’ Emerging Talent Centre.

We will organise fixtures every six to eight weeks for the girls who attend these sessions to represent Blackpool FC Community Trust and to gain more playing time as part of our programme.

In addition to this, we will be continuing our FA Wildcats girls’ football session on Friday evenings.

These sessions are aimed at all abilities and are a fun, safe and friendly session for any girl who is new to football, or for those who would like an extra training session.

We will be increasing our offering of girls’ football in local primary and secondary schools.

As well as our current delivery in Thames Primary and St Mary’s High School, we will be also delivering in Roseacre Primary.

The girls’ Emerging Talent Centre resumes on Friday, January 5, with fixtures already lined up against Westmorland ETC next month for the U14s and U16s squads.

Finally, we will be taking part in the North West regional finals of the Utilita U13s EFL Girls Cup – and are looking forward to having Lytham St Annes represent us for the third year running.

Also on January 2-5, we will have an evening delivery of our Premier League Kicks HAF scheme at Aspire Sports Hub and Claremont Park.

We also begin the delivery of the ‘Safer Streets’ initiative in our secondary schools.

January will also see our local schools visited by Aviel from The Den, who will support our healthy relationships session.

This year, our social action theme focuses on mental health as schools will begin a journey which sees them presenting their mental health projects and how they can help their local football club, community or school.

As for employability and NCS, the team will have new cohorts on their Level Up and NCS Targeted programmes.

In addition to this, we also look forward to launching our NCS Open to All programme across local college cohorts within the town.

It is a really exciting time for the programme with further developments to come later in the spring.