Going the Distance

Aim

Formed in 1984, St Patrick’s Boxing Club is a not-for-profit voluntary sports club based in Burren Co Down

Paddy McKeown and (a VERY young) Tony Hughes with the most successful St. Pat’s boxer of all time – Adrian Patterson

Background

Formed in 1984 by Paddy Mc Keown and now under the stewardship of his son in-law Tony Hughes, St Patrick’s Boxing Club is a not-for-profit community and voluntary sports club. We are affiliated to the Irish Athletic Boxing Association.

As a club, we are focussed on offering the best possible training, coaching and competitive environment for all our members.

With a wide range of sessions for all ages, we pride ourselves on being an all-inclusive club, regardless of age, religion, background or ability

Location

Based just outside Burren, our boxers come to us from Burren, Warrenpoint and the surrounding areas

Community at our Heart

The club has a reputation of being a vital part of our local community, offering everyone the opportunity to get fit, train, compete, improve skills, learn new ones, improve physical and mental well-being, and equally as important, make new friends and enjoy the benefits of being a vital member of our club and beyond.

Re-Building our Membership 

Prior to the Covid-19 Pandemic we had over 50 members (?) across all age groups involved in our club. However, since lockdown restrictions were eased, the number of members, coaches and volunteers have not returned to ‘pre-Covid’ levels. Something we want to put right. With the assistance of our members, volunteers, coaches, parents/carers and local supporters, we hope to re-build our membership base; inspire new and former volunteers to return to the club and stimulate a new era of expansion and success.

Why we need your support 

With a decline in members, this has had a knock-on effect to our club. Having recently moved into new premises, we are still building our facilities and services. This will of course take a little investment. So whilst it is vital we attract former and new members to the club and inspire former and new volunteers, we urgently need the financial support of our supporters. This is the reason we are launching our New Year appeal to raise much-needed funds.

 Extra Support from Sport NI

Through our Crowdfunder Page, anyone can donate to our appeal. We have set an extremely ambitious target of £10,000. We know this is a big challenge for a small, rural club, but we have confidence in the club’s wider family of supporters.

 Additionally, Sport NI have established Project Re-Boot: Activate to help clubs and community groups Build Back Better. As part of this support, if St Patrick’s can raise £5,000 ourselves, Sport NI will match this, potentially contributing £5,000 to our appeal.

How Your Support Will Help St Patricks

To show our determination to Build Back Better we want to raise £10,000 to put in place a range of new services and support for our members. Whilst we will focus on our juniors, all members will benefit from any and all improvements we will make.

We will put in place a 8 week Health & Well-being initiative that will allow our members to be able to:

Access professionally delivered nutrition and dietary advice through a series of monthly info sessions Looking at:

1. Fuelling our Boxers 

The Goal: Teach our boxers about food, nutrients, and how the body uses calories and macronutrients like protein to improve  performance. In this module, our members will learn:

• What it means to have a healthy diet
• The function and purpose of nutrients for sport: carbohydrates, protein and fat
• How to calculate daily energy and major nutrient requirements
• The food sources that deliver important nutrients
• How to balance all foods in the daily athletic diet  

2: Health & Injury Avoidance

The Goal: Bring awareness to micronutrients and their role in health and the avoidance of injury and illness. In Module 2, our boxers will learn about:

• The role of vitamins and minerals in sport
• Where to locate vitamins and minerals in food
• Calcium and vitamin D, the bone building nutrients
• The important role of iron in the athlete’s diet
• Where to source important micronutrients from food
• What to do if there is a deficiency in his or her diet  

3: Hydration

The Goal: Advise our members  what to drink, how much, and how to spot dehydration. In this module, your athlete will learn:

• The best hydration drinks
• Why dehydration can rob the young athlete of a great performance
• How much fluid young athletes need
• To spot dehydration  
• Several ways to check hydration status
• Best criteria for choosing a sports drink
• The lowdown on energy drinks and electrolyte drinks and how to manage them

4: Diet Planning

The Goal: Develop an eating plan for both training and competition. Our boxers will use what they have learned about food as fuel and put it together into a meal and snack plan. Specifically:

• How to balance all foods at mealtime
• What constitutes a power snack
• The best timing of eating (before, during and after exercise)
• What changes need to be made for competition days 

We will include meal plans and boxers will have the opportunity throughout to let everyone experience different food types.

5. Here's What We Made Earlier

All members will prepare  single healthy meal to be shared with other members, parents and volunteers as the final element to the project. The purpose will be to showcase not only what our members have learnt, but also will be a culmination of our Build Back Better project

Mindfulness & Mental Wellbeing  

Mind Your Head will be delivered to all members of St Patricks ABC but will be specifically tailored to offering young people the knowledge and skills which they can use to help maintain good mental health, build resilience and deal with problems in their lives.

Led by a qualified mindfulness practitioner, this element will incorporate a range of delivery methods including group activities, discussions, video clips, animation, music and fun activities to appeal to all learning styles and engage with participants.

Mind Your Head is designed with young people in mind in the 14-18 years age range and fits into what they will be covering through the school curriculum e.g. Learning for Life and Work or as part of a pastoral care programme, but will be delivered to young people in the club setting. The course will run for three weeks and be followed by the 5 week Sports nutrition course.

The Mind Your Head programme will run for 3 weeks prior to our Sports Nutrition workshops commencing.

One Club Together

Given the disruption our young boxers have endured over the last 2 years, the club believes that this is an ideal opportunity to bring all our junior boxers together to feel the true benefits of being a member of our club. We want to organise a series of team building sessions. This will not only increase the opportunity to socialise with fellow members, but also engender a greater sense of belonging for many young people who often experience a great deal of isolation, living, as they do, in a rural environment.  We firmly believe that this will also inspire and incentivise new members to join the club.

Kit and Kaboodle

The final element of our Build Back Better project will look to improve our training equipment and to be able to offer individual training and competition apparel. There are a number of items of equipment we would like to purchase for the club as well as the opportunity to buy our members new competition kits to be worn when our boxers compete in competitions or galas. 

We believe the added incentive of revitalising our club, allied to the purchase of new equipment and the provision of new competition kit for our junior boxers will send a very clear message to all.  St. Patricks is back and we mean business! 

We believe the added incentive of revitalising our club, allied to the purchase of new equipment and the provision of free training gear will send a very clear message to all. St Patricks is back and we mean business!

Please help St Patricks ABC reach its target and donate what you can. Every penny donated will help us help our members.

This project successfully funded on 28th June 2023