Antrim All Stars Boccia Bonanza

Aim

Introduce new people to Boccia in Antrim, tackling issues of social isolation and promoting physical and mental wellbeing.

Who are we?

Antrim All Stars was formed in 2018, initially with 5 members. It was a great social club where we all ended up in the Café for coffee and a chat.  We had a number of great volunteers who came along each week to help. We were like one big happy family. Word got out about the club and with the UK Boccia championships being held in the Antrim forum in 2019, our numbers increased.  

The club offers members with a physical disability the opportunity to play boccia in a recreation or competitive setting, with a team currently entered in the DSNI Pairs League and several of our members having competed in the DSNI Individual Championship.

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 What is Boccia?

Boccia is a precision ball sport, similar to Bocce, and related to bowls. 

The sport is contested at local, national and international levels, by athletes with severe physical disabilities. It was originally designed to be played by people with cerebral palsy but now includes athletes with other severe disabilities affecting motor skills, but in Northern Ireland there are club and competitive opportunities for people with all types of disabilities.

The impact of Covid-19

During the pandemic, a lot of our members would have been classed as ‘vulnerable’ and were required to shield for large parts of the last 2-years.  During this time the club members kept in touch with regular zoom calls and we were finally able to get back together in July 2021.  Unfortunately during the time, the community centre we had been using had taken other long term bookings and we were required to secure a new venue.

In November 2021 we secured a new venue and found a new home at St. Joseph's Parish Hall.  However, due to the break in training, the club has lost some playing members and volunteers, although we are slowly building these numbers up again.  Since recommencing we have had interest from a number of potential new athletes who have wanted to take up a new hobby and become part of a group now that they are able to again.

Boccia Bonanza

Due to Covid we lost a lot of our members and are therefore wanting to restrengthen the club. we thought a great way to do this was to do something we have never done before and that was to have fun afternoon competitions inviting potential participants to come along.  This would allow people to come and play or spectate.These will be held over a period of 3 months, with different criteria for each fun competition as follows:

Over 60s

Under 25s

Visually impaired

Open class

We hope that some of the participants will have had such a good time they will then join our club as players or even helpers.  

In order to support this we have identified some actions that we would need  to engage in as a club to enable us to undertake this new venture.

• Purchase new equipment – Boccia can be an expensive sport for new players, so to support new players joining the club it is important that we can offer equipment to help them get started.  This includes boccia balls, ramps and court tape.
• Additional venue hire – We normally have the hall for 1.5 hours but to successfully facilitate a competition we would need 3 hours.
• Coaching Courses – To support new volunteers coming into the club and to skill up our existing volunteers, we aim to put all our volunteers through their Boccia Leaders Award and at least one volunteer through their Level 1 Award in Coaching Boccia.   
• Promotional Material –  It is important that we are able to publicise our activities as much as possible to promote the competitions and to  attract potential new members Having flyers and other PR material that we can share with potential new players and volunteers will be key to helping to do this.

How you can play your part

There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.

1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!

2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.

3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!

4. If you want to run your own fundraiser to support us, maybe a sponsored activity or similar, use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!

This project successfully funded on 11th March 2023