Continuing to support the local community, Summit Real Estate entered into a 3 year partnership with Nelson Suburbs Football Club, earlier in the year, in a ‘Summit Football in Schools’ programme. The fantastic sponsorship helps the club to enable coaches to visit local schools regularly throughout the year, introducing the beautiful game to more kids and helping them improve their fundamental movement and football skills.
Nelson Suburbs FC Development Officer Phil Williams, who works the programme alongside Acadamy Director Neil Connell, says the response to the programme has been tremendous. “We as a club saw a need for more sports to be integrated into the school’s programs and the sponsorship from Summit has been incredible with helping this happen. This is our first year operating and we are looking good, really set up. There has been a huge amount of positive feedback from the schools which is great. The flow-on is that the kids really enjoy getting outside of the classroom which I think is especially important with everything that has been happening lately. We focus on fundamental movement, hand-eye coordination which works across the board, so kids that are more into basketball or other sports can relate to what we do.”
This has been super successful launching in the first part of the year seeing Birchwood School, Stoke Primary, Enner Glynn, Nayland Primary and Tahunanui Primary jump on board with Nelson Christian Acadamy joining in the next few months. “At the moment we are only able to do the schools in our catchment area but we look forward to bringing in more schools including Intermediates in the near future.”
Summit is passionate about supporting the community we all belong to and our next generation, and Alex Ridsdale who is heavily involved with Nelson Suburbs FC says, “This is a brilliant initiative from both Summit and NSFC. Giving children the opportunity to try a new sport can create so many fantastic opportunities. It also allows the football club to create a relationship with the community. At the end of the day sport is about bringing everyone together and providing something new and fun for kids to enjoy.”
Phil says that Moving forward the club would like to keep things as consistent as possible. “Expanding the community side of things would be a good ambition for later down the track. Some pop-up events in the community, so all families and kids can come down and have a go. There is plenty more to come, on the horizon.”