Sport Northern Ireland Project Re-Boot: Activate has provided £5,000 of match funding
Fighting Back Stonger
Armagh, Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon, United Kingdom
Aim
Our aim is to let the negativity of the last 18months stay in the past, we are aiming to strengthen the club and move forward positively
- WHO WE ARE!!
Here at Armagh Boxing Club, we have faced many of the same obstacles that other clubs have. However, we have taken the decision to try and come back stronger and better than before. The last 18 months have been extremely tough on us all however those kids trying to maintain fitness throughout lockdowns has been difficult along with the lack of sparing and interclub connections which are all key for the longer-term goals of competitions. Over this time members have lost interest and membership has lagged. Therefore, we will try and reboot the club to get it to pre pandemic levels of membership, skills and beyond what we had previously achieved.
- HOW CAN YOU HELP?
With your help and support we would love to make some changes for the advancement of all the members. All monies raised will go directly to the club to spend in a very transparent way. All money raised would be extremely grateful as our club relies on door money and donations as well as on volunteers to run the club and to offer vital coaching.
- AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
We are aiming to increase our standards by introducing new equipment to the club as well as trying to diversify the coaching team. It is long past that you can go forward and win ulster or Irish titles solely on equipment such as a skipping rope and punch bag. So many other factors now contribute, correct weighted exercises, strength, and conditioning piece of equipment as well as nutrition and diet all play major parts. Items such as pin loaded machines would offer the ability to train, junior, senior boys and girls all on the same pieces of equipment. Our classes range from 8-18 therefore a wide variety of equipment would be required for those starting their boxing journey through to those at the top end of competing on behalf of the club.
- PLAN TO ENCOURAGE GIRLS INTO THE SPORT.
Other areas of our club that we would love to see an increase in is the addition of more females joining, it is not easy encouraging females into the sport as we can not offer them the same opportunities as we can males. This is a sport issue rather than Armagh Boxing club. We would love to try and counteract this by encouraging more females to join our club but also to try and initiate those opportunities for the girls. Girls struggle to get the extra fighting experience that is offered though sparing and that’s due to the difficulties paring them up with same aged and same weighed boxers. We aim to do this by setting aside a budget for travel so that if there are likely boxers to be paired, we can get them to where they need to be. At a smaller age the girls can be paired with boys but as they grow this is difficult so they would really benefit from this ability to get relevant pairings. We would also like to try a marketing campaign to show the advantages of boxing for girls. Once we have the interest we will look to introduce female focused coaching sessions.
- FUTURE
Since 2017 when the club started, we have grown and developed to where we are today thanks to the help and support of parents, volunteers, and coaches. But if we are going to continue and grow, we need to take some steps to get our boxers to their upmost level of fitness, with the highest skill so that we can continue to grow and keep the pressure on those bigger clubs throughout Ireland. Therefore, we are aiming to raise these funds to keep doing that and to continue to offer our members the best opportunities and to invest back into the club itself for the next kids coming through the ranks.
This project successfully funded on 30th March 2022