UK Dodgeball Association

Matalan Sporting Promise Your Activity (Year 2)

Dodgeball

Entering the second year of the Matalan Sporting Promise program
our main focus at the UK Dodgeball Association was to increase the
number of schools and partnerships involved in Dodgeball and obtain
these numbers through the program. Learning from year 1 we decided that the best method was to make ourselves available to all areas of the country so that any school or partnership that chose Dodgeball would receive the support they desired from us.

We prioritised mostly rural counties and counties from the North West of the country as we knew that these areas had key focus from the Youth Sport Trust. We did however make it known to the Youth Sport Trust that we would be available in any of the other counties involved in the program. Our flexibility and willingness to support throughout the country worked to our advantage as in year 2 we have 31 partnership involved in the program that have chosen Dodgeball as one of their sports, in comparison to year 1 where we had only 6. These 31 partnerships equate to the possibility of over 240 new secondary schools involved in Dodgeball in England.

From these 31 partnerships the UK Dodgeball Association has provided coaches and tutors that will have delivered 12 young leaders courses, 3 level 1 courses, 4 staff training courses, a number of coaching sessions, provided refereeing and assistance at school competition days and festivals and provided many resource booklets by the end of the 2012 summer term.

Due to the success that the UK Dodgeball Association has had with the Sporting Promise program we have been chosen by various counties throughout England to assist them at their Level 2 and Level 3 School Games. From this we have now put together a school competition framework for Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 for the delivery of Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 and Level 4 competition for the 2012/13 school year. The response to this has already been extremely positive with many counties wishing to get on board from September.

At the UK Dodgeball Association we are extremely pleased with the way things have gone in year 2 and the improvements we have made from year 1 have been down to hard work and a better structured program but also we must thank the Youth Sport Trust for their assistance with our new Dodgeball resource video and Matalan for the publicity generated via the Trafalgar Square Event.

We look forward to more schools and partnerships choosing Dodgeball throughout the remainder of this school year and into the next.

Ben Hoyle

Director of Sports Development

UK Dodgeball Association