Mini and Youth Chairs Corner

Hi All,

It’s been a busy few weeks at the club, due to our growing membership which continues to get enquiries and new members even at this point in the season! It obviously creates logistical challenges with food and car parking, but it’s a great challenge to have! I just want to say a huge thank you to all the volunteers that have pitched in with car parking duties, first aid, kitchen duties etc - hopefully you have all had golden vouchers to get a bite or beverage on the club. It’s a small way of letting you know how much we appreciate you. And we are about to announce our next Volunteer’s of the month!

Well done to our Under 16s who are challenging right at the top of their league, and in a cup semi final - I can’t wait to go to their final 🤞The under 15s went out of their cup semi final against a team at the top of their league 3 divisions above and put on an amazing  performance, which they followed up against a team at the top of the division above! The Colts are high up and challenging for the title in their division, and the under 14s are also having a great league season in their pool, I think great things are to come from that team next year when they challenge in a league. The under 13s are also having a great season in their pool with a recent big score line so great things are also expected of them! And of course our minis, and as I was watching my son in under 11s play and I looked across the pitches at the amount of children having fun, being in a team sport and looking at the age grade rule changes and progression from under 6s to under 12s I was really proud of all the children and all the coaches so thank you to all!

Investments in Mini and Youth

I thought it would be good to talk about the amount of investment that the club is and has been making to support the mini and youth sections

Floodlights - after business cases and discussions at committee level, we will be cementing the dates and down selecting a supplier to replace our floodlights and provide more coverage across the pitches. All our mid week training sessions will benefit from that and we expect it to lead less cancelled training and match sessions as we will be able to spread the load across the pitches. This is a really huge investment from the club, and it’s a good percentage of our annual income hence fund raising to support the initiative too.

Drainage - New drainage for the pitches is also being installed over the summer in order to be able to reduce the amount of cancelled training sessions and matches, and keep everyone playing, this is another sizeable investment.

First Aiders - we have reserved funds in order to train over 20 first aiders at the club, a massively important role on a Sunday morning! More info about how we roll that out will be coming out in the next few days.

Veo Camera - the club purchased the Veo camera  before Christmas with it arriving in early 2022. You may have seen the green blob on top of the tall tripod! It’s been a hit!! We have had three age groups have an indoors session reviewing their games and going over coaching points with really positive feedback. We are also screening our first team games on the website using it. It’s now being used on Saturdays for the first team, and twice on Sundays for our Youth age groups so far. Opposition coaches and our parents are always asked for consent to film before matches and no youth games are being made ‘public’ for safeguarding reasons.

All of these investments run into the thousands each and provide significant benefits for the mini and youth sections!

Summer offerings

We are preparing our summer sessions at the moment, we will be running fitness, fun and friendship sessions for Women and Girls of all ages! These are inner warrior camps focusing on a variety of games to build fitness, get outdoors, have fun and make friends. We will celebrate our first woman’s session with pizza and Prosecco afterwards!  Initial dates as follows: May 15th Girls inner warrior camp (ages 6 - 18), May 22nd Womens Inner Warrior camp (followed by pizza and Prosecco), June 12th Girls Inner Warrior Camp, June 19th Womens Inner Warrior camp. We will look to run more sessions. Thanks to Ali Taylor and Andy Robertson for offering to coach these sessions!

Touch Union - Running in tandem with the inner warrior camps is Touch Union our non-contact form of the game, which is just for fun, mixed gender and mixed ages, mixed fitness levels. Once again, the purpose is to enjoy some games, make friends and have some fun! I am keen on playing this game, despite my current fitness levels 😂 There is a sub committee meeting tonight to iron out all the details so more information coming soon, but thanks to the subcommittee for their time and effort - George Seaton, Jack Hegarty, John Penn - this is a real collaboration across the club from seniors to Minis!

Outreach

Having already been to London Colney Primary School and Verulam Boys school to deliver some training sessions and provide rugby opportunities for all, we are also in discussion with Parmiter’s School and Samuel Ryder school (both of which we hope to deliver sessions for before September), and also discussing offering sessions with Bowmansgreen school, and St Albans Girls School - our aim being just making rugby accessible to all and provide rugby opportunities for everyone!

Socials

Our recent quiz night was a huge success and thank you to all those that came and those that arranged it! Our next social is on April 1st (no I’m not kidding, it doesn’t count after midday 😂). We have ideas in the pipeline for a Race Night, Cheese and Wine Evening, Afternoon Tea, and of course our normal informal socials!

I could go on forever, there’s so much going on that’s hugely positive at the club at the moment, but I’ll stop chirping on for now!

Colin and John

Mini and Youth Chairs

Come on you Vees! #COYV