Females from across the county will celebrate International Women’s Day with a football festival.
Kent FA’s International Women’s Day Extravaganza takes place at Cobdown, the training ground of Women’s Championship club London City Lionesses, tomorrow (Saturday), with youth sessions in the morning and a variety of senior women’s activities in the afternoon.
The day aims to celebrate the growth of female football in Kent and showcase the many opportunities available to play different formats of the game.
It starts at 9am with a 45-minute session for SEND girls, followed by a Wildcats festival for girls aged five to 11, a Squad Girls festival for 12 to 14-year-olds and an under-16 girls 3-vs-3 festival.
These sessions will involve fun training drills, covering skills such as passing and dribbling, and small-sided games for different age groups.
The afternoon will then incorporate three different formats of the adult women’s game – a women’s open-age festival, an over-30s tournament and a walking football festival.
From 5.30pm, there will be two classroom-based sessions females can sign up to attend – a Supporting Female Players CPD and a Stepping Over the Sidelines workshop.
Any male or female can attend the CPD as it is around supporting female players.
However, the Stepping Over The Sidelines workshop is for females.
A female-only refereeing course will also run throughout the day.
The day is being organised by Rebecca Moore, Kent FA’s women and girls development officer, and is aimed at both women and girls who aren’t currently playing football but are interested in trying it and those who already attend sessions such as Wildcats and Squad Girls elsewhere.
Moore said: “This will be a pressure-free opportunity for women and girls to go out, get on the ball and have a bit of fun.
“There’s so much power in bringing everyone together in one venue to highlight and identify the areas of the game that are growing and evolving, using the training facilities of the London City Lionesses – who, along with Durham Women, are one of the highest-ranked standalone professional women’s clubs in the country.”
The event will provide an opportunity for female players who might be nervous or hesitant about taking up or getting back into football to experience a taster of a particular format of the game they might decide to then pursue at a club.
Moore added: “We know that sometimes going to a club for the first time can be a bit intimidating, so coming along to this event, where it’s an unfamiliar environment for everyone so everyone’s on a level playing field, is a great way to focus solely on just playing and enjoying the game as part of a group.”
