Young Leaders organise free multi-sport festival with support from StreetGames & Active Withernsea

On Wednesday 24th August, local Young Leaders Skye Osborne, Caitlan Kirk and Mercedes Cook organised a fantastic, free multi-sport festival with support from StreetGames & Active Withernsea. More than 60 children from the area attended and got involved in a wide range of activities, including golf, cricket, Zorb football and lots more!

We caught up with Skye, Caitlin and Mercedes to hear about the day…

What a brilliant day you’ve had today! The sun was out and the children looked to be having a great time! Tell us, why did you want to organise this sports festival in Withernsea?

Caitlan: When we started to plan running an event in the town we started to talk to children and families and we heard that they really wanted more activities to do locally, especially chances for children to have a go at lots of different sports with their mates.

Mercedes: We wanted to give children something to do in the holidays and give them an opportunity to be more active and have fun!

We can see a lot of effort must have gone into planning this event. How did you go about this and did you need to do any training in the lead up to the festival?

Caitlan: We’ve been planning this for months and have been working hard to make it happen so today it was great to see all the hard work pay off.

Skye: We all recently completed our StreetGames Multi Skills Qualification over 5 days to make us more confident sports coaches and also our safeguarding qualification too with other local coaches from the area.

What skills do you think you’ve developed during planning and running this festival?

Mercedes: We’ve definitely developed our communication skills, social skills and confidence, if you’d have told us a couple of months ago we’d be talking in front of 70 people we would have laughed! But today we did!

What was your favourite thing about the festival?

Caitlan: I loved having a go at coaching a new sport – spikeball – alongside an experienced coach from StreetGames (check it out!)

Skye: It was great to see it all coming together, after months of planning, and to see and hear how much the kids enjoyed it! And the lunch was fab!

What’s next for you three and StreetGames in the area?

Skye: There are four new, free Doorstep Sport Clubs starting in September in the town, including girls’ football, golf, multi-sport and fun fitness so we’re really excited to see these get started and for there to be more weekly sessions for young people in the area.

Mercedes: We hope to plan more events like this and keep young people motivated to be active. And keep developing our coaching skills too! Watch this space!