Our Wings School Notts have recently created their own highly successful football team and even developed a unique partnership with the local professional football club, Mansfield Town. This has given the young people at Wings the opportunity to be part of football training sessions on a Thursday night at and to visit the One Call Stadium and use Mansfield’s training facilitates as part of their personalised enrichment.
Both sessions are led by academy coaches from the club. Mansfield Town also deliver the Premier League Reading Stars programme to a select group of young people at the school. They are also providing the school with regular match tickets, assemblies on careers and equality and offering player visits to raise aspirations and give the children and young people a taste of professional sporting life.
The Thursday night sessions and the Friday enrichment sessions held at their training complex are very enjoyable and are a great way for the Wings football team to bond and improve their team performances.
Stay tuned for match results as they happen!
We checked in with some of the school staff, team from Mansfield Town and a young person from the school…
“I really look forward to the sessions!” - Young Person.
“It’s inspirational to be around a professional football club and its surroundings and for our young people to have this unique opportunity is amazing. For them to be able to use top class facilities and professional football league coaches gives the children a huge sense of pride and self-belief.” - Rhys Sharpe, Football team manager/LSA.
“Since the football team has been formed, they have played 5 games and won 5 games. This has created a huge sporting profile at the school and boosted morale and engagement, this is evident on a day-to-day basis. This has raised aspirations of our young people and the profile of PE/school sport around the whole school tremendously.” - Adam Bailey, PE Teacher.
“We have created a partnership delivering various activities including football, assemblies, interventions and enrichment lessons. The purpose of the pilot project is to engage the pupils through sport, education raising aspirations, making them aware of career opportunities. I can honestly say it has been well received by the pupils, they are very engaged across the project with the physical aspects, reading interventions and they had a great experience on a behind the scenes stadium tour of Mansfield Town FC. With even more to look forward to such as assemblies and match day experiences I am positive the project will achieve its outcomes and have a huge impact of the pupils.” - Gary Shaw from MTFC.