American Football - Increasing youth participation

Aim

Increase participation in American Football for boys and Girls within the Causeway and Coastal Glens area.

We are the Causeway Giants, a relatively new American Football Team based in Armoy, on the Coast of Northern Ireland. We were formed in 2018 by passionate individuals who are dedicated to bringing American Football to the North Coast.

We want to not only promote the sport, but also promote getting back outside, making friendships and enjoying playing sports. To do this we want to run a number of weekend sessions around the summer and get local children to come down and try us out, no matter whether they've played before or not. The great thing about sports is the community and shared emotion it creates. Sports is not discriminative or prejudice it is inclusive.

Due to Covid -19 just after the club was established, changes were required to allow for training. Groups were restricted, volunteers couldn't travel for coaching, training sessions had to be spread out and greater control on attendance ( i.e no dropping in). Recruitment for the sport stalled, membership dropped due to change in circumstances and as a result we were low in numbers.

We hope to address these areas by, 

• Holding a number of trial sessions to allow boys and girls to give it ago, with no commitment
• Building on from the above, we would then look to roll out based on interest a number of structured weekend training camps taking them through the basics of the game along with coaching and fitness
• This would allow us to enter teams into local American Football tag tournaments and create a pathway for those to get into Senior Level.
• We would also look to organise with other clubs in NI, local youth tournaments, similar to what we established with the Senior squad 
• It would allow the club to have a youth development programme with the aim of being a a competitive club in the North Coast and hopefully across Ireland

We have support from the local community association, but we hope to be able to enable those who are interested in taking up American Football to try us out.

We hope that through the Youth development Programme we want to establish, we can attract people to, not only get involved in playing the sport but also support in other ways.

The money will primarily be used to buy equipment such as helmets, pads and balls. Some money would be used for flood lighting and basic utilities.

Currently there would be no cost for Coaching, as the current Senior players would volunteer to run sessions and we have recently appointed an experienced Director of Youth American Football (voluntary basis).

We are also keen to focus on those that have dropped out of other sports in the hope we could entice them with American Football and all that it has to offer.

This project successfully funded on 5th April 2022