Blackpool FC Community Trust column: Giving girls the chance to play football

One particular success story has been the Girls’ Future Lioness Development Centres, which run every Monday at Aspire Sports Hub.

The ETC is funded by the Premier League for the next three years and is supported by Liontrust.

That enables the Trust to offer a greater opportunity for the players in the Blackpool FC Community Trust ETC.

The ETC will see the numbers of players engaged in Football Association (FA) pathway programmes more than double, helping to create greater access for all.

Girls’ ETCs across the nation will increase and diversify the talent pool, giving more girls the chance to take their first steps on the pathway towards playing professional football and following in the Lionesses’ footsteps.

Blackpool FC Community Trust launched the Future Lioness Development Centres in March of this year.

It is striving to engage with young females in Blackpool and the Fylde, using the brand of Blackpool FC.

These sessions provide high-quality structured coaching sessions for girls aged from U8 to U14 levels, aiming to develop young players in moving towards the standard required to become a part of the ETC.

In just two months, five girls have been invited into the ETC to play a fixture against local boys/mixed grassroots teams, highlighting the important part that the sessions play in providing a pathway from grassroots to the ETC programme.

Those girls are Darcy Bennett (Clifton Rangers U9s), Marisah Cocker (Morecambe Ladies U10s), Ivy Katzmann (Blackpool FC Girls and Ladies U10s), Belle Heslop (Fleetwood Town U12s) and Maycee Atkinson (Blackpool FC Girls and Ladies U13s).

The Future Lioness Development Centres have engaged with 77 girls in the first six-week block, with 78 per cent of these coming from Blackpool and Fylde.

Andrew Aspinall, female football manager at Blackpool FC Community Trust, said: “It is vital that we invest in local talent, and we want to make sure that any female growing up on the Fylde coast can access a variety of cost-effective and quality football opportunities.

“There are lots of people in this area doing excellent work in girls’ grassroots football and it is great to see so many attendees in our sessions from a wide range of clubs who play in the Poulton and District Primary League.”

The next two-month block for the Future Lioness Development Centres can be booked online.

They run from 5pm-6pm for U8s to U10s, 6pm-7pm for U11s and U12s, and 7pm-8pm for U13s and U14s.

In addition to this, Blackpool FC Community Trust also runs girls’ football camps during half-term, Weetabix Wildcats sessions for girls aged five to 11 and free-of-charge Premier League Kicks girls’ football sessions.

The girls’ football camps have run for the last three half-terms and have been particularly successful.

Numbers have increased each time with the most recent ones at Easter leading to a record-high 35 girls attending in just one day.

Details on female football opportunities are available by emailing [email protected]

For more information about Blackpool FC Community Trust, call 01253 348691, visit: www.bfcct.co.uk or follow BFCCT on social media.