
Holywell Bay SLSC Sport England bid
We are very pleased to announce (belatedly) that we have been successful in receiving funds from Sport England for equipment for our Junior section to buy new equipment. The bid was put together early this year with the help of an outside consultant from Sports Bid UK. Donna Longman, our club Treasurer, worked very hard to pull this bid together for our club and we are extremely grateful to her for all her efforts. This also involved a lot of gathering information from many other members of the committee, the club, the wider community and other organisations including the RNLI. Donna worked really meticulously and quickly on this even to the point where the consultant had this to say; “Thanks Donna you are the most efficient person we have yet found in this process, well done! All of the clubs could really do with a Donna.”
This has enabled us to purchase 5 Kracka racing boards and 2 adjustable Fenn Skis. This is all a fantastic benefit to the Junior section of the club with far reaching benefits for many, many, more of our members. The equipment has already been used by the Juniors and Masters for training and in competition at the SLSGB National Championships in Exmouth.
We are delighted with this outcome and we are hugely grateful to all involved in this successful bid. We hope to see as many members as possible benefitting from this; we hope you enjoy paddling this kit! Please, Please look after it and it will look after you!
Thank you Sport England, Thank you Holywell Bay SLSC!
Some excerpts from the bid:
Supporting Young Athletes
Introduction
Holywell Bay SLSC is a long standing and well established community based amateur sports club. The club has worked very hard to retain its younger membership from the age of 14yrs and upward. This has taken several years of support and dedication and has resulted in the development of a strong team of coaches and volunteer supporters who have been very successful. The club has retained an extraordinarily high percentage of young teenagers and is set to maintain and improve on this achievement. The missing part is the provision of the right amount and type of racing equipment for the young people to train and compete with. The club is at risk of all of its hard work unravelling due to lack of equipment. This project is about supplying the specialist equipment needed.
Project Scope
- To order and receive the equipment
- To include the 11,12/13yr nippers with the Junior/Youth team when the equipment first arrives and include them more in the Junior team activity in the form of taster sessions etc.
- The coaches will then train the team and lead them into competitions with the new equipment.
- We will produce a report at the 12 month milestone to inform and complete the project.
Deliverables
- The retention of many more teenagers in sport through their teenage years now, and into the future.
- The continuation and maintenance of a strong culture of inclusion and support from coaches and parents for their young athletes.
- The submission of a report to inform on the things that worked and the pitfalls when retaining young people in sport.
Evidence of need
The club has worked hard to get the right team in place to stem the loss of young teenagers to the club and to sport. This strategy has been successful as we have retained a much higher percentage than the national average of young people into our Junior section (national retention average 25%, HBSLSC almost 50%).
Through our research with our young people, other clubs, adult members and parents it is evident that the main issue is lack of equipment – namely racing boards and surf skis. We have higher numbers of young people coming through the nipper section so we need to maintain the momentum and retain these young people in active sport.

Steve Peck (Club Chairman) and Donna Longman (Club Treasurer) with junior members at the launch of the new boards.