On the 9th of May we will be launching our NEW Solidarity Soccer programme, which will be replacing our Development programme that has been running at Hillsborough College for the last year.
Our Solidarity Soccer sessions will take place at Hillsborough College on Monday evenings and Concord Sports Centre on Tuesday evenings (the Tuesday sessions will start on the 10th of May).
Our Solidarity Soccer programme is about showing how football can reflect life, that it can be a positive force for change and help people learn valuable life lessons and apply these in other contexts. Football can be a force for good, increasing confidence in life and interpersonal skills and body image, improving health and fitness whilst breaking down barriers and divisions that exist in society.
Key aspects of the new programme include:
- It will be delivered in reference to our club’s alternative coaching style, which you can read about here!
- There will be a theme for each training session e.g. passing, which we will focus on through different exercises and explore why it is important in football, the techniques utilised (e.g. the different techniques of passing a ball) with an emphasis on there being no such thing as a stupid question (no matter how long you have played football, there is always something new to learn)!
- We will have a strong digital focus to the training sessions, with us using social media and video technology (tablets, GoPros etc) to make the sessions more digitally interactive and hopefully even more engaging and rewarding!
- We will have digital based awards that we will send out via email to different people taking part in the sessions each month, and – with permission – share online, reflecting on the progress and achievements people make in different ways!
- It will involve our new Tech and Tekkers training exercise as part of the training sessions, where each month we will focus on learning a football skill that we will practice each week, with tech being used to document the learning process and share online – on that note, if there are any skills you want to learn (no matter how basic or complex they are) then let us know and we can look at teaching these (making no promises on the complex skills though)!
- The new programme is about us demonstrating how football can tie into other non-football things going on in our life and how it can be a positive force for change – therefore we also ask everyone that engages on this programme to state one personalised life goal, so something that you want to achieve no matter how big or small and it doesn’t have to be to do with football, but it can be if you want! We will then look at if and how AFC Unity can help you meet this goal, whether that’s through the session or outside of the session! It can be as random as you like, we’re sure in most cases we will be able to help.
In sum, the new programme is focused on non-competitive training as our competitive options are expanding in the club, so we want to focus these sessions on engaging women who are new to the sport, want to give the sport a try, or who are wanting to build back confidence, skills, fitness etc., exploring key concepts in football and also connecting it to digital technology and wider life goals that we may have.
If you want to get involved in these training sessions, please get in touch so we can provide more information and we are happy to answer any questions you may have.
Finally, and most importantly, thank you to South Yorkshire Sport who have been invaluable in supporting our development of this programme.