October 21, 2016, by Kate Rothery

FA Girls’ Football week hits University of Nottingham

The start of October saw the re-launch of the FA’s Girls’ Football week with over 70 players from total beginners to Notts County Ladies superstars hitting the new David Ross Sports Village 3G pitch.

With more than 100,000 players involved nationally, the University of Nottingham hosted their own girl’s football night taking the opportunity to launch their 2016/17 programmes.

Sarah Orton and Lois O’Toole of UoN Women’s Football club told us more;

For our FA Girls’ Football Week event, we decided to link it with the launch of our women’s football intramural (IMS) league.

We are extremely proud of our club development structure and are hoping to grow even larger in the coming year, enabling even more girls to play football. Our IMS league  is an integral part of this, giving every girl the chance to play, develop their skills and make friends in our football community.

The event was a really great experience, with a decent turn out of girls of all abilities coming down to have a kick about and play. It was also our first opportunity of the academic year to further tie together our performance teams (playing in the British Universities and Colleges leagues) and IMS teams, with many girls, new and old, taking part in 7-a-side friendlies throughout the session.

Thanks to the sister partnership we have with Notts County Ladies FC, we were lucky enough to have Chelsey Weston and Aivi Luik come along to help run drills and hand out some prizes, which was a really nice way to end the session. All of the feedback we’ve received so far has been very positive and overall it was just a really fun evening. Following on from the success of our Girls’ Football Week event, we’re hoping there will be many more similar events to come!

Katie Baxter, the lucky winner of a signed Notts County Ladies shirt commented;

“It was really enjoyable with lots of fun and challenging exercises. It was very easy to meet people in a really inclusive environment.”

Lauren Heria, Students’ Union sports officer, and a keen footballer, added;

“The event was fantastic, really well run and it’s so positive to see so many girls out enjoying a game of football. Our vision here at the University of Nottingam, Engage, Inspire, Excel, aims to provide opportunities at all levels of the sporting pathway and the Women’s Football club are an excellent example of a holistic club!”

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To find out more about joining UoN Women’s Football, please visit their website.

To check out all the photos from the evening, view the Flickr stream here.

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