Punching above our weight

The Purpose of our Fundraising Appeal

Throughout Lockdown, we were rightly focussed on keeping safe. Now that restrictions have eased, we want to repair the damage done during this time. We are particularly keen to restore positive mental and physical health, fitness and wellbeing for all boxers at our club. But we are also keen to invite our local neighbours to join us in our town centre gym to develop positive health and fitness schedules.

After months of isolation and with very little social contact, our members need encouragement and support to make the transition from 'sofa-surfing' to active engagement in sport. We recognise the challenges many of our members face and especially understand the difficult decisions and the hard work we all face returning to physical activity after an extended period of non-participation. The high levels of fitness, stamina, dedication and inspiration needed for boxing requires a significant personal commitment. This commitment has to be matched by the club.

To demonstrate our commitment to our young members, and to heighten levels of excitement around our club, we are embarking on our campaign to raise funds to purchase a range of new equipment. We believe that by 'upping our game' we will demonstrate to past, current and future members that Ards Boxing Club is here to support our members on the long road back' to where we (and they) were before lockdown

A new outlook, new equipment and a new sense of togetherness is the overall aim of this appeal. To do this we want to inspire, enthuse and excite our young boxers and offer them a first class facility and experience 

Children’s health, fitness and wellbeing are placed at the heart of our recovery efforts and every single child is given every opportunity to be active again.

About Ards Boxing Club

Ards Boxing Club provides a safe, welcoming and inclusive training environment for young people and adults. Whether our members want to learn a new skill, get fit, meet other people or to enjoy the thrill of pitting your skills against an opponent, we offer the opportunity to get involved regardless of skill levels.

As a sport, boxing offers young people the opportunity to:

Develop life skills

Build friendships with other members

Improve their mental health and take steps to counter 

Improve their physical health

Develop self confidence

Increase their self-esteem

Develop employability skills

Avoid criminal and/or anti-social behaviour

Support social skills development

Punching above our weight will focus on a number of key themes.These themes will see the inclusion new activities, new training methods and with your support, new equipment to overcome reluctance of some members to return to the sport they love after a long period of lockdown. We want to develop a new mindset for members. But we also want to rebuild our club, to re-motivate our members and to help us bounce back after a number of difficult years for all of us.

 For us, the ultimate objective of this appeal is to inspire, to rebuild and reinvigorate the club. In turn, we will do the same for and with our exceptional young boxers. We will all be in a much better position to realise greater potential and enjoyment of a higher standard of facilities and equipment within the club.

Key Themes:

1. Attract more young girls and women to the club, by offering general fitness and introduction to boxing course over 20 weeks. This will be based in the early stages on non-contact activities such as Boxercise, yoga, pilates, shadow boxing, tabata boxing, kick boxing, full-body Barre and a few surprises. Who knows, maybe we'll find the next Katie Taylor in Newtownards!!

2. Prepare our 'older' junior members to reach higher levels of competitiveness through a 20 week schedule of high intensity specialist coaching to focus on specific areas, such as speed, high intensity, stamina, warm up and warm down tips, prevention of and recovery from minor injuries 

3. Encourage our members and their families to understand the wider health benefits of looking at their diet, physical health and not least, mental wellbeing. Over 12 weeks (8 weeks for mental health support) we will offer a series of free drop in sessions which will include building a balanced diet, routines for home training and achieving positive mental health outcomes. All delivered by qualified fitness coaches and professionals from the metal health and nutritionist sectors 

Now this is a bit of a 'nerdy bit here, but bear with us, it's the nuts and bolts!!!

As boxing is a high-intensity, intermittent-impact sport, we need to educate our boxers on the ways to maximise their performance levels. In short, to help them understand the How’s and Why’s of maintaining a training schedule that keeps them in the red-zone for dominance and adaptability in competition 

We want our young boxers to be able to perform at higher intensities thus allowing each individual a better opportunity to be in control of the contest at an intensity that is greater than the opponents.

To improve the intensity of our boxers, we have taken advice from potential specialist coaches over a 12 week block of training. They have outlined a straightforward three phase approach that we hope to follow with most of our members:

Funding will be used to benefit our young members specifically to re-energise and motivate participation. We want to combine these new training and coaching opportunities with better quality training equipment and facilities. We believe the club can overcome reluctance of young people returning to the club and the sport. 

 We take pride in being a cross community organisation providing boxing and general fitness coaching to over 120 local young people and children. Since starting in 2012 the club has increased numbers year on year, Classes are run most nights and the club has five voluntary fully qualified coaches. 

As a charity, Ards Boxing Club is run on a strictly not for-profit basis and ALL income is used to support the activities of our members 

What we hope to achieve 

Much of our equipment has been in use since the club was formed in 2012. Even then, most of it was bought or given to us as second hand. As you can imagine, after almost 10 years of constant use, we desperately need to upgrade some of this training equipment. 

We have set ourselves a fundraising target of £10,000. Now this is a massive stretch for the club. Sport NI will match what we can raise as a club. So for us to raise £10,000, we need to raise £5,000 from our supporters and Sport NI will donate a further £5,000. 

We know that times are hard for most families, but we would urge you to give what you can spare and help the club improve our facilities for local young people 

How you can play your part

We know that everyone is struggling just to pay their bills during the cost of living crisis, but we are asking our members, parents, volunteers, coaches, neighbours and local businesses to make a donation to help our appeal.

Even the smallest amount will make a difference...for every £1 that is donated, Sport NI will match that amount. So our target is to raise £10,000. If we raise £5,000 ourselves, this will be matched by Sport NI up to a maximum of £5,000

There are four simple ways you can help us reach our target, and make this project a reality:

1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!

2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.

3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!

4. If you want to run your own fundraiser to support us, maybe a sponsored activity or similar, use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!