Jack England helps create football league for nearly 80 schools
Primary school children in Bolton now have their own football league to play in, thanks to the efforts of University of Cumbria sports student Jack England.
Working on placement with Bolton City Council Sport Development, Jack helped to create a primary school football league for the whole of Bolton, with nearly 80 schools now taking part. Jack, who is 20 years old and from Bolton, also designed and created the website for the league. He’s currently in the final year of a Sports Studies and Sports Development degree at the University of Cumbria’s Lancaster campus.
Jack set up his placement by contacting the Bolton Health and Inclusion Team and was invited to help set up the league a month later. Bolton had not had competitive primary school football for a number of years so Jack was set the task of starting it, as well as creating an easy way for the schools to input results online and make the league as self sufficient as possible.
Jack explains:
“On a day today basis, I work on the league as someone from the schools to contact if they have any problems about completing a fixture. I update the different groups on the website and I contact people throughout the football community in Bolton to help improve the League such as Bolton Wanderers FC in creating coaching opportunities for teachers.”
Jack was able to get 62 schools from a possible 96 schools involved right at the beginning and has developed an online learning platform for the league which each school can access. He feels that his course at the University of Cumbria has really helped him throughout the process and helped with his goal of a career in sports development after graduation.
“The course helped me understand why the issue at hand was needed and gave me ideas on how to improve the scheme. The university have been there to give me chances to gain experience in a wide range of fields and in the end gave me the chance to take part in the project.”
Mark Christie, Programme Leader for Sport Studies, said:
“Jack has clearly made a major contribution to developing competitive sporting opportunities for youngsters within Bolton and demonstrated how essential it is for students to be involved within community settings in order to enhance their employment prospects. The School of Sport staff work hard to identify these vocational opportunities throughout their time at University in and out of the curriculum, but students like Jack are also very proactive in sourcing vocational experiences to develop their key practitioner skills, industry knowledge and competencies, enabling them to stand out from the crowd when it comes down to job interviews.”
If you’re interested in studying sport at the University of Cumbria, please visit the website at www.cumbria.ac.uk/courses| or call 0845 6061144.