North Yorkshire Sport contacted Harrogate Tchoukball Club to see if they would like to receive free assistance from a mentor, to help them to develop their satellite club. Club founder Janine accepted straight away and was paired with a mentor, Nicky.
The club required support in a number of areas including marketing, social media, volunteers, recruiting and retaining players. Janine also had ideas that she wanted to develop and take forward, such as a system that rewarded players for their attendance at sessions.
The mentor was able to provide guidance and advice on each of the club’s areas of concern as
well as providing new ideas to consider. Janine was encouraged to consult more with the club members to really understand what they wanted, to develop a network of other women coaches in order to share ideas, and to develop a strong social media presence which included taking pictures and filming short clips of the sessions so they could be shared.
The club is great, we’ve got players who have been there over a year now because they feel they’ve got a real input into the club. Thanks to Nicky we now have Facebook & Twitter accounts & have sent out posters in the area. Players attend weekly & they bring along friends which increases numbers, there’s rewards & incentives too. I ask them what they’d like to do regularly - they like that. They can also wear what they want which they enjoy - they don’t have to wear all of the kit if they don’t want to.
The mentoring support comprised of face-to-face sessions, emails texts and phone calls and Janine felt that Nicky was always on hand to help. Having a mentor inspired everybody at the club and Janine now feels more confident and effective in her role:
“Even with all my experience and knowing the sport- I’ve set up clubs before, this was really very new & different. What Nicky brought was the fact she could give me some really good advice. It reassured me because I wasn’t 100% sure “is this the right direction to go? Am I doing the right thing?” She was able to say "yes, absolutely" & give me some really good ideas on how we can spread the word about the club & I feel that I am going in the right direction. I can lead the club now & know that I’m doing the right thing.
She also felt that the mentoring support had enabled her to target participants more effectively and had made the club more sustainable:
“I have got a real core group of players & I know what type of members they are - they are actually ones that were maybe inactive or not the best at sport. They do like physical activity which showed in some recent questionnaires that they did. They want to come along, they want to play & they want To be associated with the club & that’s been really important
I would absolutely recommend the mentor scheme. It got our club off the ground,
it helped me a lot & it’s definitely really worthwhile. If anyone needs support, be that a new club or an experienced club, it’s definitely something I would recommend.“