First Kicks / Fun Football (5th-8th Grade)
2025 Registrations:
Registrations Open: 1st January 2025
Registrations Close: 28th February 2025*
*Although we'll still let you join after the season has started, we'd rather not turn away any child wanting to play football!
FIRST KICKS & FUN FOOTBALL: The following grades are based on 2025 school years for your child.
5th Grade - Year 0 or below
6th Grade - Year 1
7th Grade - Year 2
8th Grade - Year 3
WHAT:
The First Kicks and Fun Football programme is designed for your child's first step into the footballing world. It provides a fun environment for a child to develop their movement, balance, and enjoyment of the game. Our overall aim is to ensure all kids have fun and start to fall in love with ‘the beautiful game’. Our program is run by a dedicated group of volunteers who are passionate about kids’ involvement in football.
WHEN:
With the growth in number of players registering across the club we have taken decision to trial moving our First Kicks and Fun Football programmes for 5th to 8th grade players to Friday evenings for the 2025 season.
The season will kick off on Friday 4th April 2025, sessions will run from 4.30pm to 6pm and will be split into the grades shown above. Our ambition is to make this an entertaining product for all involved, we appreciate that the friday night time may not suit all so we are open to options as to how to improve it. We'll be looking to secure food trucks each week in order to ease the burden on parents feeding their children.
The structure and timings will be finalised over the coming weeks.
COACHES/MANAGERS:
We are always on the look-out for parent volunteers to coach and manage each team. You will be required to attend be sessions and games held on Friday evenings at Shoesmith Domain. No previous coaching or managing experience is required. The role of the coach is to manage the number of players in their allocated team each week, to be a point of contact to the parents of the players in their team, to run the weekly practice skill of the week with their team and to assist/referee the games. The role of the manager is to support the coach and organise the team and supporters.
We’re aware that this may be a parents first foray into the world of football coaching, and we will aim to offer free coaching courses should their child wish to continue their football journey across the age grades.
GAMES: FORMAT
We will split players and teams into the 4 age grades shown above.
We are hoping to have a team of young coaches that will run the first part of the sessions, which will include practise drills designed for each age grade. We will then move into matches which will be run by each teams respective parent coaches. We will begin promptly at 4.30pm each Friday and run through until 6pm. At the end of the matches, we all promptly help to collect up all the equipment and move to the clubhouse for Prizegiving.
TEAMS:
Teams will be formed once the intial registration period has closed, 28th February 2025. Unfortunately, we are unable to accommodate all requests for players to be in the same team as others, but we will always do our best.
TRAINING:
There are no specific training sessions during the week, however each team are free to meet up for training if they desire. Alternatively, if there are enough players that are wanting a training session during the week, similar to the junior training times, then please get in contact at admin@warkworthfc.org and we’ll see what we can organise.
PLAYER OF THE DAY:
Each week a player from each team is awarded a player of the day certificate. The player is chosen based on how they have performed throughout the session and whether they have shown the attributes which are being taught by our coaches
We are extremely grateful for any local sponsors to provide vouchers for kids to reward them for their achievements.
8th GRADE ONLY:
For players participating in 8th grade, we will be offering an additional option to come and play on Saturday Mornings at Shoesmith Domain on Pitch 4 at 9am in your teams. This will be designed to assist their development and understanding of the game as they hopefully progress to 9th grade football in 2026.
