Girls Football Festival Fun
The South Cambs School Sports Partnership hosted a morning of football for girls from seven primary schools recently when they took part in a ‘Let Girls Play’ festival at Linton Village College.
Each of the teams attending was allocated a Women’s EURO 2022 Finals country to represent and given a set of t-shirts to wear throughout the event which involved some fun football activities and lots of friendly games all focused on giving the girls a really fun morning whilst providing many of them with their first opportunity to play football.
The teams of Year 3/4 girls came from Histon & Impington Brook, University of Cambridge, Pendragon, Barton, Petersfield, Dry Drayton & Coton Primary Schools. A team of 18 sports leaders and girls football activators from Linton Village College led the mornings activities, managed the teams, and refereed the matches.
An extra treat for the girls was having role model and England U19 player Issy Bryant in attendance to talk to them about how she got into football and her pathway so far from playing for Bar Hill before joining Cambridge City and more recently Ipswich Town whilst also being selected for England. Issy has recently returned from an England Lionesses U19’s camp where she competed against Austria and Ireland.
Issy said, “It was amazing to see so many young girls wanting to play football and it’s really good to see how far the support for girls football has progressed over the years.”
Claire McDonnell, South Cambs SSP Partnership Manager said,
“Football is our national sport and we want to make sure girls have the same opportunities to play football that boys do. We want them to play in the curriculum, at breaktime, after school, at local clubs.
Now is a great moment in time for women and girls’ football with the UEFA Women’s EUROs taking place in England really putting women’s football in the spotlight.
We hope the festival and having Izzy there with her England shirt has created some excitement for the Women’s EURO finals and perhaps inspired some of the girls to take up further football opportunities.
This is what some of the girls who took part told us about the event:
“I enjoyed playing against other girls and being able to make up our own goal scoring celebration which we got to use quite a few times!”
“I really like playing up front – it was good to play against other girls in matches that are the same age as us. Sometimes matches in school aren’t fair and these were.”
“I was really nervous at the start because I don’t usually play football and I’m not very good at it but the leaders were really nice and they encouraged me to have a go. By playing with the girls I felt more confident and got to practice.”
“I felt much more included playing with girls than I do when I play in school and it’s not girls only Friday football. The boys only pass to each other when we play with them.”
South Cambs School Sport Partnership is part of a nationwide scheme that aims to mainstream football in school for girls with the vision to ensure every girl has equal access to football in school by 2024. To find out more visit www.girlsfootballinschools.org