Additional Floodlights & Ground maintenance

EXCITING UPDATE

As you will have known we set out on a venture to raise £8k towards floodlights for Kimbolton Town Colts. Whilst on this venture we have been lucky enough to receive football foundation funding to purchase the lights via another source 75% funded leaving us to fund 25% only.  

 This is fantastic and will really move the club forwards. 

We appreciate that when people agreed to donate it was on the basis of a target of £8k to fund floodlights, our plan is to reduce our target to £3k and change our focus to additional lights for the ones we have been granted and grounds maintenance.

I am sure you will agree that this award is amazing and will really drive KTCFC forward for years to come.

Who are Kimbolton Town Colts FC: - 

Kimbolton Town Colts FC provide youth football for Kimbolton and surrounding areas. We have around 80 players playing competitively and around another 20 that are developing skills under the FA wildcat programme. 

The club have 10 qualified coaches across 4 teams ranging from U9 to U14, currently we play at Pound Lane in Kimbolton as shown below. We are lucky to have a wonderful playing surface where the young people int eh area can develop and improve. 

The story so far 

Formed in 2014 in a village that had not seen competitive football for young people for many years. Parents realised that this was a great opportunity to develop a team that would give young people the chance to improve general fitness and improve mental well-being. From that very first day the club has grown and developed into a well respected part of the local community. Local villagers come and support the boys when playing, often taking time out from a dog walk to reminisce on childhood dreams of scoring the winning goal at the world cup or remembering the time they graced the same playing surface. 

Coaches have developed within the club and new coaches have come from outside to bolster the development opportunities the young people have week upon week.

As a club we are proud that some of our players are training in the Cambridge United youth system.  The 2019 / 20 season was going along so well when the pandemic struck. !!!!!!!

How did a global pandemic impact a young person playing grassroots football on a piece of grass in a small village in Cambridgeshire?

It impacted the young people hard, everything they got up for on a Saturday morning and went to bed excited for on a Friday night was taken away in the blink of an eye. 

March 2020 will be a month that they will never forget, playing with team mates gone, playing against school friends in different teams gone, training to improve skill sets gone. Everything that they loved about football was taken away. Months and months of development lost, lost opportunities to trial for local teams like Cambridge United, all the social interactions that come with playing and training. Did it impact a youth player harder than a professional? We think its the same as they both couldn't do what they love doing - Playing football.  

COVID-19 denied the young people of the community a chance to play and train effectively. This impact reaches deep into the community as the club has built and developed a solid player base and the young people are proud to play for the team.

Below are some pictures of what the players love doing, 

This was one of one of our first sessions back training under COVID restrictions

Why are we using Crowd funder

We believe that by purchasing portable floodlights it will allow the players more time back on the training pitch to return back to doing what they enjoy and want most. It will help return the impetus of playing football and the next Lionel Messi being discovered. 

We want to make the most of all opportunities available to the children when we are allowed back to train and play. Having these lights will mean we can train during the week throughout the year and not be restricted to weekends only. 

All of these young people will have lost one year of development from life and we want to help them get back to where they should be and let them fall back in love with the game.

We want to let the fun session you see above be held under lights like the ones in the picture below. Lets help these young people recover physical awareness but most of all them them take a  positive impact on mental well-being. 

In addition to the above the 2020 summer COVID issues restricted us on how much pitch maintenance we could carry out. As such we need to spend additional monies this year repairing 2 years worth of use and weathering.