Chalfont Softball Club Achieves Clubmark Accreditation

Chalfont Softball Club is the first softball club in the UK to achieve Clubmark accreditation through BaseballSoftballUK, its national governing body.

Formed in 2004, Chalfont Softball Club has two adult teams that play in the Windsor and Maidenhead District Mixed Softball League. Chalfont Phoenix is now an established team in Division 1 of the league and Chalfont Flames have been pushing for Division 2 honours for the last three seasons.

In 2009, the Club recognised that if it was to progress and evolve, then it would need to develop junior softball programmes, not only within the Club, but also locally in schools and youth organisations. BaseballSoftballUK’s Clubmark accredition scheme seemed the obvious route to take in order to acheive this.

Ensuring Safety for Young People

Gaining Clubmark accreditation means that Chalfont Softball Club has proved it is a safe, effective and child-friendly club in which young people will have a worthwhile and fun experience playing softball.

Neil Turner, Head Coach of Chalfont Softball Club, said “The process has been a hard but worthwhile one, our Club now has a good framework in place for it to run smoothly, successfully and most importantly, safely for both our existing members and for future junior and adult members.”

The Club has policies in place that help to ensure that the conduct of its players, coaches and volunteers meets those expected of a friendly, sporting and professional sports club. It has four BSUK qualified coaches who run well-planned weekly training sessions and a development plan that maps out how the club will achieve its aspirations.

Clare Winter, Chairman of Chalfont Softball Club said “The accreditation should help us to recruit new members, a central part of our development as a club. We are particularly excited about creating links with local schools over the Winter in time for the start of the 2011 season next Spring. We have successfully trialled our “Introduction to Softball” programme this Summer and we are excited about expanding it over the next couple of years.”

Junior Softball at Chalfont and Ley Hill School

The Clubmark accreditation process has given the club confidence to start working with young people. This Summer has seen the first male and female junior members playing for Chalfont Flames and Chalfont’s coaches have found it rewarding to see the players establish themselves in the team, showing progression throughout the season and incredible future promise.

The Club has also run a successful junior softball programme for a group of 9 and 10 year olds from Ley Hill Primary School near Chesham. Chalfont’s qualified coaches have run sessions for between 10 and 22 children on Saturday mornings throughout July and August as an introduction to the sport.

Neil said that “The Introduction to Softball programme has been a great learning experience for both the children and our coaches. It was our first experience of teaching junior softball and we have found it to be very enjoyable and thoroughly rewarding. The Clubmark process gave us the confidence to introduce this programme on a small scale and we are looking forward to expanding it next Summer. Ideally we would like to attract enough youngsters between the ages of 14 and 17 to be able to run junior team in the Windsor League.”

Other clubs should follow Chalfont’s lead

Chalfont Softball Club encourages other softball clubs to obtain Clubmark accreditation. Neil concluded “Although there are many steps involved in the Clubmark process, it has not been as challenging as it first appeared. We received great support from BSUK and in particular, Paul Wilkinson, BSUK’s Club Development Manager, and Stan Doney, BSUK’s South East Coach-in-Residence, were incredibly helpful and supportive throughout the process. We hope that the two other softball clubs in our league that have started the process will gain their accreditation prior to the start of the 2011 season and we look forward to working with them to create a junior softball league in our area in the forthcoming seasons.”

President's Day - Sunday 8th August

Following the success of last year's President's Day, Chalfont Softball Club have decided to make this an annual event. This year the Club's President, Neil Turner, is organising the event on Sunday 8th August on Goldhill Common.

The event will comprise 3 games of softball with Flames playing Phoenix (Phoenix narrowly won this game last year, no doubt Flames will be keen to reverse this this year) and both Flames and Phoenix play Avengers (the President's invitation team). The winner of the Phoenix vs. Avengers game will win the President's Cup - Avengers will be looking to hold on to this for another year.

Watch this space for more details of the day, including start times, other planned activities and details of plans for refreshments.

If you would like to play then please contact Emma - secretary@chalfontsoftballclub.co.uk

Junior Softball at Ley Hill Primary School

We have started running a 7 week programme of junior softball at Ley Hill Primary School with the help of one of our members, Mel Parker, who is a teacher at the school. The youngsters at the school had already played some softball and we're keen to develop their skills and play a lot more.

Neil and Clare, with the help of other club members and BSUK, are running a series of 1.25 hour sessions on Saturday mornings at the school with the aim of:

• Developing basic skills
• Improving the kids' knowledge of the game
• Having fun

So far we've covered catching, throwing, ground balls, fly balls and batting and the kids have had a great time competing against each other in a series of skills based games.

The kids all show huge amounts of natural talent and it's exciting for us to see the softballers of the future in action.

Development Of Softball Coaching Staff

You may or may not be aware that Neil Turner and Clare Winter have been working towards their Level 2 Softball Coaching awards this spring. Following a weekend of classroom modules and two practical assessments, they were left with proving that they have run six training sessions of which four needed to show a linked progression.

Well this week they have received their coaching awards after submitting training session plans for all Chalfont's training sessions since we started training at the beginning of March.

Gaining Level 2 is quite a milestone for both Neil and Clare and the club. It now means that:

• we have proved that all our training sessions are planned well
• we can now comply with the Clubmark requirement that all our training sessions are run by qualified coaches
• we now have two coaches that can (after a small payment to BSUK) be insured to run training sessions and events outside of our club - in schools and youth organisations for example or corporate softball days
• we now have the capability to run the eight week softball programme for a group of 9 and 10 year olds over in Ley Hill during July and August

To build on this development futher, the next step would be to start helping our Level 1 coaches start working towards their Level 2, and to find some more players interested in starting (or continuing) their Level 1.

Neil and Clare would be interested in hearing from anyone in the club who would like to start getting a coaching qualification.

Differences Between Softball And Rounders

Neil is looking for someone that is up in the rules of rounders for a future article for this website.

Following a number of discussions with people involved with running sports clubs in the South Buckinghamshire area, it is apparent that there are very strong links between rounders and softball, with a large overlap in the general princples of each game and that anyone with skills in rounders can find it easy to apply those skills and start playing softball. This was highlighted this weekend when a rounders player attended our training session and showed immediately that she would make an excellent softballer in a short space of time.

If you are interested in helping Neil with this article then please drop him an email or fill out the contact us form on this website.

Successful Open Day Held

Chalfont Softball Club held it's annual Open Day on Sunday 18th April on a sun drenched Gold Hill Common.

The event was run to introduce new players to softball and to provide a training session for those regular players that had not been to many training sessions so far this season.

The training session, run by our qualified coaches, consisted of some basic skills drills but with a competitive element - with players being split into groups and competing against each other in a number of skills drills.

We then completed the session with an hour long softball game where the new players got the experience a real softball game.

As with all training sessions, post match relaxtion was at the Village Hall pub.

Scoring Session

On Wednesday 14th April, Stan Doney from BSUK will be running a scoring session for the club. The session will be held in the Village Hall pub at 8:30pm and is open to all members of the club that are interested in learning how to score.

The aims of the session are to:

• Familiarise everyone with the basics of scoring
• Standardise scoring within the club
• Develop scoring such that it can be used to analyse offensive and defensive gameplay.

If you're interested in coming to the session then contact Clare (chairman@chalfontsoftballclub.co.uk) or just rock up on the night.