Last week (12 -16th July) 110 Young leaders descended on Wolverhampton University from all over England.
Each county was entitled to send one male and one female candidate to have the privilege of attending workshops, delivered by some of the FA’s most qualified and experienced staff in their respective fields of work. Cambridgeshire FA sent Ella Phillips-Ansell form South Cambridgeshire and Jak Hart from Wisbech.
Candidates arrived on the Monday morning and began by getting to know the fellow students and the National and Regional staff. The opening ceremony was conducted by the Management team, a select group of students from last year’s camp who, with the guidance of National FA staff, had taken on the responsibility of organising the camp for this year. The first guest speaker was Emily Simpkins, a Young Leader from the first camp, in 2005, who has since progressed to working for the FA as a Tesco Skills coach as well as playing Premiership football for Doncaster Rovers Belles. Another success story came from, Ted Grizzel who, following the 2005 camp, has progressed to running his own coaching business and working as a community coach for Worcestershire FA. Ted attended the ceremony and the week as a guest speaker and a member of the Regional Counsellor staff. Both speakers were inspirational role models for this year’s contingent.
The week was fabulous if a little wet! The students had an intensive week of informative, interesting workshops, developing existing skills and discovering new roles and interests. Workshops included futsal, refereeing, progressive coaching,
5 -11 coaching, goalkeeper coaching as well as a number of workshops offering advice and guidance on future careers and study options.
In addition the young leaders were kept busy with regional reflection groups offering them support and advice on making the most of these opportunities through their County FAs and additional schemes post camp.
The evenings were spent in separate groups where both knowledge and imagination were put to the test through quizzes, mini Olympics, and riddle solving games.
Thursday evening was the fancy dress disco where everyone on camp was asked to express themselves in a slightly different way! The theme was ‘what you wanted to be when you grew up’ and surprisingly not many turned up as footballers but there was a teletubby, a penguin and some ghost busters amongst the costumes some interesting selections!
Friday morning the teams played a tournament and then this was followed by the closing ceremony with another inspirational talk, this time from World Cup final referee Howard Webb. The young leaders welcomed him with a not very familiar chant ‘the referee’s a hero’ and he was clearly moved by the reception. He delighted those present by passing around a football used in last week’s world cup final as well as his referee’s gold medal. His talk was centred on the young leaders present and how they were all capable of going on to achieve great things. One comment he made that summed up the week was ‘I now know the future of football in this country is in safe hands’, a feeling echoed by all the staff who witnessed the outstanding performance from all the young people who attended the camp.