Shining the Light.
Story written by Lucy Haslam - Bawtry CC.
Here at Bawtry Cricket Club we have started something new. We’ve been around for decades but we recently decided our club needed a little something more. Our Secretary, Mike Clement, took a leap and decided to start an All Stars and Dynamos programme at Bawtry. This programme has occupied most of our Friday nights at the club, distracting kids whilst their parents prepare to start their weekend. We have found this initiative incredibly successful and really popular among our local children. We are lucky to have an amazing team of eager volunteers, whom this success can be attributed to. They worked tirelessly to prepare sessions, recruit children and attend coaching workshops.
Luckily for us, one of our local volunteers, Gill Fotheringham, is a primary school teacher and so has some experience controlling large swathes of eager children. She also used her resources to recruit children from local schools – going in and talking to them about the All Stars initiative, building up momentum for the upcoming season. Gill has continued to support the All Stars programme by not only offering up her Fridays but also volunteering her boys to help too. Gill originally went into schools pre-pandemic and so managed to gather some force for All Stars in our 2019 Season, and these players have stayed with us through to 2021, now playing Dynamos. This school programme was one of our largest successes as a club and ultimately allowed us to build a secure young-juniors section.
This year, we also decided to branch out into Women & Girls Cricket. It was an inevitable next step for us, especially since so many All-Star mums were keen to get involved with their children. Our year started off by researching, checking in with other clubs and gathering information on W&G start-ups. I would recommend contacting your local Cricket Development Officer, as well as other teams you know are local to you, maybe even teams you compete against. Tickhill Cricket Club – our cricket neighbours – were a huge help with this, giving us all the extra information and even offering to help coach some of our players as we did not have sufficient facilities. We applied for a series of grants in order to help us afford suitable equipment for W&G’s cricket and we are continuing to recruit for our team and festival coming up this summer.
We hope this success will continue and that all our festival recruits fall in love with game, allowing us to come back bigger and better next year. If you’re looking for a friendly and inclusive club to join, pop down to the Memorial Sports Ground – Home to Bawtry Cricket Club.
Blog article by Dean Smith
d.smith@yorkshirecb.com
Please contact Dean with your stories!