Grassroots Football at Olé FA – What is it?
Grassroots Football is a little bit like gardening! It’s our job to plant lots of football seeds, and help the love of the game grow in our local community.
Like in any sport, opportunities to participate are important – these are our seeds! The chance for young players to simply give it a go, or begin their football journey. We’re working to remove barriers and provide as many different opportunities to get involved as possible.
We love seeing how popular football is becoming in Porirua! All the participation happening out there is great for growing the love for football, and it’s also a great way for everyone to keep active, learn, and connect with friends, whānau and community.
For the first time at Olé FA, we have a full-time Director of Grassroots. It is exciting to have someone dedicating all their time and energy into creating lots of opportunities for Porirua young people to be involved in football!
There has been LOTS happening in 2019 already, so we thought it would be great to update everyone about the awesome gardening the Grassroots team has been doing out there.
We’ll make this a quarterly update, so stay tuned for more throughout 2019.
Giving the Gift of Football
Olé were lucky enough to have four ¾ sized football goals which were no longer needed at the academy. We wanted to extend their lives, and thought a great way to do that would be by donating them to local schools.
We teamed up with our friends in the Parks Team at Porirua City Council (thanks guys!), who arrived with a big truck and helped us transport the goals over to their new homes!
Two goals are now happily living on the field of Corinna School, and the other two are being enjoyed at their new spot on the Maraeroa School field. We were able to give each school some nets, and a bag of balls as well.
It’s been great to see the goals getting plenty of use by lots of happy footballers!
Olé FA Football in Schools
We’ve been having fun hanging out in schools so far in Term 1!
The team has been running our 5-week coaching programme in Postgate School and Natone Park School. It’s been great getting to know the teachers and students, and seeing them have lots of fun while building on their football skills.
We have also introduced lunch-time football this year. No coaching, just playing! The team have been at Holy Family School and Maraeroa School once a week to get pop-up football games going for anyone who feels like playing. Sometimes it feels like we have the whole school out there, woohoo!
If you’re keen to see any of this happening in your school, make sure to get in touch.
Sunday Skill Builders
It’s been great to see lots of new faces out having their first go at football and to have lots of familiar ones back continuing to develop as players. We’ve kept a lot of our sessions game based so far this term, as this is where our Skill Builders seem to be the most engaged and having the most fun.
There are still four more sessions of Skill Builders this term, and new players are welcome to join at any time. This is a programme for children aged 6-11 years who are keen to come and give football a go in a relaxed, fun environment and continue learning basic football skills.
Street Football Fridays
If you haven’t heard, community Street Football is BACK for 2019! We had our first event of the year on Friday 1 March and it was epic! We had about 70 young people out enjoying the football, music, kai, giveaways and all-round fun. Awesome to see lots of parents and whānau coming out to be part of the action too.
Huge shout out to our man Peter at AVS for bringing the extra atmosphere with his music and DJ skills. A big thank you to Kaibosh, who donated three boxes of beautiful fresh fruit and other food to keep everyone fueled for football. And of course, Porirua City Council who make it possible for us to use the space.
Want to get involved with future events?
– First Friday of every month in 2019 (postponement in the case of bad weather)
– Waitangirua Mall courts
– FREE!
– 6 – 7.30pm
– For young people aged 8-14 years
– Street football games, music, snacks, giveaways
Porirua Project
Ole FA is involved with Porirua Project, a joint football and music play programme running in collaboration with the awesome team at Virtuoso Strings. There are around 70 kids coming in twice a week to play, learn, have fun and make new friends. We are 6 weeks into the programme and the team are absolutely loving being part of such a great community initiative. Check out the website for more info http://poriruaproject.com/
What’s coming up?
Term 1 School Holiday Programmes:
Olé FA is running a couple of different holiday programmes in the Term 1 School Holidays. Current Young Olé players will be invited to be part of ones involving visiting clubs and academies. Anyone else is more than welcome to join our other programme. Dates and information for this is being confirmed now.
Schools Tournaments:
We will be hosting two fun school tournament days in 2019. The first is scheduled for Term 2, and this one will be for the girls! There will be a mixed tournament in Term 4. All schools in the area will be invited to enter.
Grassroots Football League:
We are looking at trying a new initiative – our very own community based football league. The team are working away behind the scenes, more to come!
If you have any questions, or you’d like to know more about what’s happening, please feel free to get in touch with Simone Workman on [email protected]
Thanks for reading!
The Olé Football Academy Team
THANK YOUS!
A huge shout out to all these awesome people who help us do what we do!
Ultibend
Kaibosh Food Rescue
Porirua City Council
A V Services Ltd
