Inspiring the next generation of athletes with funetics at St Albans AC

Getting children excited about our sport is the key to kickstarting their lifelong enjoyment of athletics and running. For St Albans AC, they identified an opportunity to expand their offering to younger children in the form of funetics. We caught up with Heather Hann from the club to learn about why they chose to start their funetics journey and what an amazing impact it has had so far.

Identifying demand within the club community

St Albans AC have been offering children's athletics sessions to 8-11 year olds for many years, however around two years ago parents began to express an interest into getting their younger siblings involved too. Watching from the side lines, many of these young people were ready to follow in their brother and sister's footsteps.

Enjoyment has always been the number one priority for the club, so they wanted to offer younger children a really positive and fun first experience of the sport. The perfect opportunity came to introduce funetics - an England Athletics programme for children aged 4-11 to get active, have fun and learn the key fundamental movement skills.

The club started out with pilot sessions during the summer of 2024 to test the waters and have not looked back since. The funetics sessions now run alongside their current older primary school activities.

Engaging the parents and training leaders

Across a vast number of English clubs, capacity and the number of volunteers is an ongoing issue. St Albans have addressed this head on and have supported nine adults and three young leaders through funetics education courses, and other England Athletics coaching courses. The young leaders have not only helped to increase the club's capacity, but they have also been contributing to their own personal development and Duke of Edinburgh Awards.

"It has been brilliant in terms of growing the club's team of volunteers. It has really helped that there are online courses that make learning convenient and prepare leaders to put their learnings into practice.

"Our coaches have found the courses provide useful opportunities to discuss with other participants and instructors about any challenges of delivering a safe and fun athletics session to young children. In particular, the parents who completed the Club and Community Activator course found the practical workshop to be really valuable. They had no prior experience of coaching or leading so it was great to learn from an experienced facilitator.

"You can never have too many volunteers who are ready and willing to be involved!"

It has been wonderful to learn of parents getting stuck in to leading sessions, however this has been a process over time. At the start it was crucial to have parents on the side lines, cheering on and supporting the children to give the new activities a go.

"We found that this parental support led to high engagement from the children and also after a few weeks of sessions, led to some parents wanting to volunteer. As a result of gradually recruiting more and more parents to the volunteer team, we have been able to offer funetics sessions at other times of the year beyond just the summer term. We are excited to now broaden out the offering beyond families of existing members."

Putting the fun in funetics

Learning the key fundamental movement skills of running, jumping and throwing is the foundation of the programme, but having fun along the way is essential. funetics combines exciting games, challenges and equipment to keep the children engaged.

"The children have absolutely loved the fun games and activities - learning new skills without even realising. Sessions typically end with the children shouting 'thank you' to the volunteers before heading home laughing and smiling. It’s been great to receive feedback from parents that they can see their children have really developed in confidence, both with their physical and social skills.

"My favourite part as coach is the games where you can see the children are really enjoying it and are totally absorbed in the activity. From designing orienteering and obstacle courses; to pretending to be a shark/supervillain in tag games; using steeplechase water jumps as “bunkers” playing throwing golf…it’s just been so fun to bring the activities to life for the children while leading the sessions."

Thinking of giving funetics a go?

It is safe to say St Albans AC have not looked back since beginning their funetics journey in 2024 but Heather has some great advice for any other clubs thinking about exploring funetics.

"The key piece of advice I would give is to prioritise the children having fun doing the activities, because if the children associate sport with fun and enjoyment from an early age, I do think this will stay with them and lead to a lifetime of staying active and healthy. 

"We’ve been really creative with activities, having Halloween/Olympics/Bluey themed sessions; using fun things like swim noodles, an inflatable shark, water guns, long socks (for the children to make to “hammers” using tennis balls); and keeping sessions very varied with a run, jump and throw element included each time to keep the children’s attention.

"But I would emphasise that having fun requires a bit of preparation - share session plans with your coaching and leading team before sessions to get them up to speed and build in their feedback going forward. This means that everyone can focus on enjoying the activities during the sessions, and the children respond positively to confident, enthusiastic coaches and leaders."