The Beginnings

June 2019

I have been training a team of children as part of a Sunday league. These children had tried out for a team and unfortunately there was simply too many children for the team and was not able to join a team, one of those children was my son.

My son had a hard time enjoying anything that didn't involve a screen, he would often not want to join my other children in playing outside especially with sporting activities. He went to this football training session with his mum after some persuading, quickly myself and my partner saw a huge change in his character.

My son started to enjoy the interaction with others, he enjoy the physicality of the sport and the mental challenges a game presented to him. When that day game and they wasn't enough room for them on the team that is when I realised that the other children could have been in the same position as my son, finally finding something they enjoyed and not being able to progress with it how they had thought.

I quickly stood up along with another dad from these children and started an intensive training session to learn everything we needed to help these children get the enjoyment they was after. We both did the FA level 1 course as soon as we could, attended and completed all the relevant courses to be able to take these kids into a league and play the sport they enjoy.

This was one of the best and easiest decisions I have ever had to make. It is tough, it is challenging especially when balancing my own business which is effectively 2 jobs, there isn't anything out there that is more rewarding to me right now.

Here is the birth of Little Boots soccer school. June 2019 I have been working with Creswell parish council to help secure a facility to use as a training grounds. I have the equipment, the facilities, the insurance and all the documents needed to make my sons story a story of many and not a few.

The training sessions are planned to be held on Tuesdays and Saturdays with hopes that I can get school holiday camps that would run the entire day. Today is just the beginning of a long, hard path to help children, like my son find something to inspire them, something to challenge them and something to excite them.

I hope to see more and more sports entering children's lives so they can feel part of a team and push themselves to challenges that face them.

Phill Osborne