Starting A Sports Club For Kids In Your Area

If you have a bit of spare time in your days, and you’re already a well-seasoned soccer or basketball player, why not pass on your skills and experience to the youth you see around you? You know what the world of athletes is like, and you’ve got all kinds of contacts to rely on, so why not put these elements to good use? Kids need more active outlets these days, and doing your bit to spread the joy of taking part in sports can mean the world to both young and old alike. 

Starting a sports club for kids, mainly those who are active in your neighborhood and the surrounding area, can be a great boost to the community. Whether there’s few clubs for kids as things stand, or there’s a gap in the market when it comes to sports hangouts, you can do a lot for the health and general sense of well-being of the up and coming generation. 

So, if you’re passionate about getting kids interested in the world of sports, as well as doing your bit for the community and economy you’re a part of, here’s a few things to remember before you start up a club of your own. Make sure you go about the process right! 

Pick a Good Time to Meet

This is a good thing to think about, in the background whilst you plan, before you even come up with an idea of the sport you’re going to be running a club for. After all, if you’re going to be running a club for the local kids to sign up to, you’re going to need to hold meetings and sessions at child friendly times. Most of all, your club cannot operate late in the evening, or very early in the morning. 

It’s good to do some research as well. If you have kids yourself, or you know some parents who are close friends of yours, you can very easily look into the typical schedule kids have these days. You can work out the best day or days you can hold meetups on, and you can work out what kind of time-frame would be mostly free for the young people in your area. 

For example, you’re going to have to leave some time for them to complete their homework, before they get their kit on and rush out to play a game of footie for a couple of hours. You also need to be sure they have plenty of time to get home again, and get a good night’s rest after a long day. All in all, you don’t want your club to become more trouble than it’s worth to attend. 

Find Out What’s Popular

Next up is your research into the community demand. If you know what sports are popular ahead of time, you’re going to find it a lot easier to get people interested in the club you’re going to be posting flyers all over town. And when you know what people are interested in, you can better align your coaching skills – if soccer is a big deal in your area, and you have no idea what you would even need to start with as a soccer coach, it might be best to leave the legwork to someone else. 

So, if you find out what’s popular, you cut out a bunch of hassle for yourself, and make establishing your new kid’s club a lot easier than it would have been before. It means you have time to get your ideas together, and makes sure you have a more accurate sense of the number you have to cater to. 

If you took a survey, for example, of the best loved sports in the area, and you knew the amount of young people who had participated, you’d be able to section out and isolate some actual numbers. You’d know that the 83% of participants who voted for ‘basketball’, with 300 kids taking part, would mean 252 kids would love to have a basketball club to try out for. And that’ll make catering for basketball drills that involve more than 5 to 12 players much easier to handle! 

Come Up with the Right Rules

If you do manage to come up with a club that has some popular community demand behind it, and you know you’d be great as the coach with a whistle around your neck, you’re going to need to know your health and safety rules as well. You don’t want to break any of these, and you definitely don’t want any kids getting injured on your watch!

Depending on where you live, health and safety regulations are going to differ, but there are some general rules that will apply. For example, depending on the age of the kids you’re coaching, girls and boys might need to be separated into two clubs, and only play against teams of the same gender. It’s a rule that applies to a lot of sports, but not all of them, and it’s a topic that’s widely debated in a lot of circles. 

Could You Start a Kid’s Sports Club?

A lot of people are capable of it, but committing to the idea, and actually seeing it through, are different ideas entirely. You need to make sure you have the time on your hands to run a club, and that you’ve kept health and safety in mind, and that you’ve got all of the right licensing (if it’s necessary) on your side. And not only that – you need to be experienced as a coach, and have plenty of intuition to work off of as well. 

Most of all, you need to be able to work with kids. You need a good level of patience, and to be able to keep tantrums and tempers from erupting from time to time. After all, kids can be very cruel to each other, and it’s imperative to enforce a sense of discipline whenever they’re on the pitch or the court together. 

Posted in