Sport Northern Ireland Project Re-Boot: Activate has provided £5,000 of match funding
Lisburn Cricket Club Youth Programme
Lisburn, Lisburn and Castlereagh, United Kingdom
Aim
Lisburn Cricket Club want to use this matched funding from Sport NI to help continue to improve our growing youth section.
Our Club
Although Covid-19 has thrown up many challenges for local sports clubs, Lisburn CC has continued to increase our membership numbers. We are the oldest cricket club in Northern Ireland, and the third oldest in Ireland. Established in 1836, we celebrated our 175th anniversary in the 2011 season. In 2021, we had 220 youth members aged 6-19 involved in our youth pathway or summer schemes.
Cricket allows boys and girls from across the community the opportunity to be involved in a team environment and therefore helps them to develop key life skills for the future. At Lisburn we ensure that all the kids in our pathway are giving ample opportunity to take part and participate in both training and matches. In 2021, for the first time in the clubs 187 year had a Women and Girl’s section. This was met with great enthusiasm and went from strength to strength throughout the season.
Covid-19 has affected our club and our young people greatly. The club missed out on any pre-season training that the youth teams would typically engage in for 2 years. This has meant our young players have lost out on a significant amount of technical coaching and contact time. The club have had to forego many fundraising events due to the restrictions that were in place which has dramatically reduced our income over these past 2 seasons. However, we are now looking to the future optimistically with the hope that we can move on from Covid.
Why is this important?
Lisburn have been working alongside local primary and secondary schools for the last number of years to make sure that cricket is available for all and that more young people are given the opportunity to experience the game. We think it is very important that we can maintain these links and continue our primary schools programme in 2022. This would enable the club to continue to develop male and female cricketers and put in place the building blocks for our future.
Like most local sports clubs, Lisburn are dependent on volunteers to give up their time to keep the club in good order. To keep expanding our club and our youth section, we need to get more coaches and provide more equipment than we ever have. We have a severe need for more coaches and/or volunteers to become qualified to deliver cricket to support our increased membership as a result of Covid-19. We want to offer our coaches the opportunity to undertake accredited courses that can allow them to to improve their knowledge of cricket and how to coach. At the same time, we are also determined to keep our membership fees as low as possible, in order to make cricket, and the opportunities it offers, affordable and available to all.
Our Project
We begin our outdoor cricket in April and we are aiming to have 250 girls and boys in our pathway this summer. This means we have a lot of cricket to play, with a lot participants. This means we need to make sure that we have suitable equipment and coaching numbers to provide a quality experience for these young people. We also want to improve our coaching ratio to help increase the contact time that our members receive.
We will continue to deliver cricket sessions in our local community to ensure that all children and young people have the opportunity to play our great game. We see women and girls cricket as a key focus for our club over the next few years. This is an area which we want to grow dramatically and your support will help us to engage with the schools in our area and help to grow our playing numbers for these groups. Lisburn Cricket Club are determined to offer cricket to the masses and produce high-quality players who can play for the club in future.
Your support will enable us to:
- Deliver our schools programme to 7 primary schools and 2 secondary schools in the Lisburn and Castlereagh area.
- Buy suitable bats and balls to ensure that all age groups have the appropriate training equipment.
- Buy pads, gloves and helmets so that boys and girls can experience cricket without parents having to worry about this expense.
- Buy coaching aids, netting and grounds equipment to meet the demand of our increased membership.
- Train and support coaches to develop and mentor our young players. We will send our coaches on accredited courses to increase the quality of the programme that we can deliver.
- Deliver our summer cricket programme to develop our young cricketers to represent Lisburn.
We aim to have 8 boys and girls youth teams taking part in NCU competitions in the 2022 season. Through our youth programme, we hope boys and girls will continue to develop the values that come through organised sport, whilst building friendships that will last into their adult lives.
Thank you for considering supporting the Lisburn Cricket Club Youth Programme.
This project successfully funded on 18th April 2022