St. Itas AFC football for kids from 5-9 years will be running again this season with the aim of providing the basic skills for the next generation of football players. The sessions are run on Saturday mornings for an hour in St. Ita’s Ballymastone Campus. Two separate sessions are run with the 9.45am session for girls only and the 10.00am session primarily for boys. Sessions are run in a fun manner, and are aimed at players who have limited or no experience of football. The club hope to build upon a very successful season which ran from 2021 to 2022. According to Robbie Sinnott, who helps run the girl’s academy: “Last year saw our previous academy players achieve incredible outcomes on the U12, U13 and U14 panels, but we also saw huge improvement in our current academy players who hopefully will develop into the club’s future stars. We had a group of Ukrainian kids join us mid-season, and our own girls were fantastic in how well they included them immediately and created a fun hour for them on Saturday mornings.”While some players stay for two-three years in the Saturday morning sessions, there also is a ‘graduation’ of a cohort of players, who go on to form teams who will play in inter-club competitions in the coming season. According to Niall Hayden, who coordinates the boys training: “We had a new boys team and a girls team emerge this year, and hopefully the Saturday morning sessions will have given them the core footballing skills which they can develop and grow in the future.”The boys and girls training every Saturday benefits from the sponsorship of Glenveagh Homes, whose support has been critical in helping fund the training, and kitting out emerging teams for the new season. For anyone interested in joining, please contact: Girls: Robbie Sinnott (robbie.sinnott@gmail.com) Boys: Niall Hayden (niallhayden85@gmail.com)