Community football sessions in Mixenden proving a hit with youngsters

The community session started back in August 2021 on Mixenden reservoir park when Leah Greig, owner of Positive Impact Sports, decided to introduce a weekly one hour football session for children in the community.

Leah said: “We originally started out with four children. Very soon the numbers increased to eight attending each week.

"Due to weather conditions and the pitch conditions, sessions constantly had to be cancelled, so I decided I needed a facility.

"I organised a meeting with Mungo Sheppard, the headteacher at Ash Green Primary. He kindly agreed that we could use the MUGA indoor facility free of charge for the foreseeable future for the benefit of the children within the community.

"He could see that it was a great opportunity for the children of Mixenden to become active over the weekends at a low cost.

"Since then, numbers have increased, so much so that our highest attendance has been 32, but on average we get around 14 children attending each week.

"Our aim is to help more families in the area by increasing our attendance number's as we have more staff members to do this now.

"The aim of community football sessions is to help families in adopting a healthy lifestyle, putting young people into a career pathway – providing opportunities like volunteers and coaches – promoting equality, and giving support to people who are in need.

"The sessions engage young people and encourages them to have respect, responsibility, resilience, teamwork, and passion.

"All session promote fun and are very social, while the participants develop some football skills. There’s no pressure placed on anyone; we can build them a pathway into grassroots football if that's their preference.

“In Mixenden there currently isn’t a session like this for the community to get involved in and for that I am proud to provide this provision for the community.

"I am honoured to have the support from Mr Sheppard at Ash Green Primary and the local parents throughout this journey.

"We are going to be expanding our weekly activities by providing a ‘tiddly kickers session’ targeting four to seven-year-old children.”

For more information on the sessions, contact Leah at [email protected] or 07399 621444.