Sport Northern Ireland Project Re-Boot: Activate has provided £5,000 of match funding
Instonians CC -Supporting Youth Cricket in Belfast
Belfast, United Kingdom
Aim
At Instonians CC we aim to engage boys and girls of all ages across South Belfast, in learning and enjoying playing cricket.
Instonians Cricket Club - Our Club
Instonians Cricket Club was founded in 1932, originally with the aim of attracting boys attending Royal Belfast Academical Institution (RBAI) to play cricket. Since then, the club, playing within the Northern Cricket Union, in Northern Ireland, has gone from strength to strength, broadening its membership and is proud to be fielding four senior teams with weekend play, one midweek team and a ladies team.
Instonians Cricket Club Youth Section - Our lifeblood
Importantly, we also have a tremendous youth section with 195 boys and girls enjoying club coaching and games twice a week. In the youth section, we have one U15 team, three U13 teams and four U11 teams, one of which is an all-girls team.
We are a Clubmark accredited (best practice) community club run by volunteers. We believe that playing cricket provides a unique opportunity for boys and girls from across the community regardless of ability, background, ethnicity or gender to enjoy a sport which promotes a strong team ethos.
Through our junior cricket programme, we aim to showcase the benefits of sport and exercise and help our juniors and their families develop a lifelong affiliation with the game and lifelong friendships, through positive experiences. As a club, we believe in promoting a culture of fair play and developing our juniors to be the best they can be.
Coronavirus Impact
Like many clubs, our club and our young people have suffered as a result of coronavirus, with opportunities for training, competition and fundraising all curtailed.
Following the initial coronavirus lockdown, our numbers dropped dramatically from well over 100 boys and girls registered to less than 70 which impacted on our membership subscriptions. Moreover, our youth section lost all their winter training for two seasons meaning that the technical coaching that is so important in developing our young cricketers didn’t take place.
The pandemic also prevented us from running our annual fundraising quiz and ladies night over the past two years, as well as a planned ‘Night at the races’ event which all had to be cancelled impacting dramatically on our income.
But…we are determined to recover!
Instonians – Our 2022 Youth Programme
In 2022 our season starts in April and through our schools and club programmes, we are hoping to have over 200 girls and boys playing over 100 cricket matches this summer.
We look forward to recommencing our competitions with other clubs, in both softball and hardball and look to add inter-school cricket matches ran by Instonians cricket club, with the club providing facilities, equipment and coaching. We are also planning to organise a youth festival of cricket in September 2022, with junior teams from all over Northern Ireland attending.
We are asking you to help our club build back better for the future following the pandemic.
The money we hope to raise will be used to develop and enhance our club coaching provisions within five Primary Schools in South Belfast and (currently) one grammar school in Belfast, providing additional opportunities to play cricket. The money will also help fund coaches to organise, umpire and score more games.
For beginners, we will teach the fundamentals of cricket; we will support the transition from softball to hardball for those who have played some cricket previously, and for those with more cricket experience, we will strengthen and develop their cricketing skills, opening up potential representative opportunities; all the while ensuring the highest standard of coaching, whilst having fun and enjoying the game.
We plan to increase our coach to youth ratio to allow more coaching and specifically more technical coaching in small groups. We want to ensure that the training time that our youth would otherwise have had during the last two winter seasons, is recovered and that their level of interest, enthusiasm, enjoyment and skills are not impacted as a result of the pandemic.
As well as small group technical coaching, we also intend to use part of the money for specialist coaching clinics in wicketkeeping, bowling and batting again allowing our youth to recover the training time lost during the last two years.
Alongside this, we will purchase cricket equipment. From hard balls, tennis balls, bowling machine balls, to a bowling machine stand and even a wooden storage shed. For 100 cricket matches we need 100 balls ……specifically cricket balls to suit all age ranges and abilities within our youth section.
Thank you for considering supporting the Instonians Cricket Club Youth Programme - we'd love you to be part of our club growth in 2022! Your contribution to this Crowdfunder will be doubled by SportNI if we raise £5,000 on our Crowdfunder page.
This project successfully funded on 28th March 2022