Member Article

Groundbreaking international deal offers Little League Sports student coaches chance to work and study at Finnish

Liverpool-based football coaching and vocational training provider Little League Sports has struck a deal with Finland’s Kisakallio Sports Institute to give its trainee coaches international experience.

Based in Woolton, Little League Sports offers post-GCSE students vocational NVQ qualifications in sports coaching up to level three and FA football coaching qualifications up to level two.

But this exchange deal with Kisakallio, just outside Finnish capital Helsinki, will see students offered the opportunity to spend time working and studying abroad. They will experience different cultures both on and off the football pitch and be exposed to new sports that will broaden their understanding of coaching, such as ice hockey, volleyball, basketball and gymnastics.

According to Little League Sports director Jordan Wright, the deal – brokered with the help of contacts at Woolton High School – will add a new dimension to the education its courses provide.

“We do have football at our core but we train coaches to be adaptable, able to understand how their training can apply to any sport,” he said. “Some of our young coaches want to be teachers, others may decide to look to other sports or other countries to pursue their goals.

“Our job is to make sure they are fully equipped to provide high quality coaching and training in any sport. This deal with Kisakallio will give students the chance to spend time abroad in another culture, practise and develop their football coaching skills in a nation with a very different style of play and allow them to become more familiar with sports which are less common here than they are in the rest of the world.”

Kisakallio’s facilities are state-of-the-art. Based in woodland in Lohja, the institute has 700 beds, an ice hockey arena, heated 3g artificial football pitches, four-court tennis hall, 700 square metre gymnastics hall a basketball arena, a 1,000 square metre sports hall, a gym and the Rantamakasiini restaurant on site.

“The facilities are first class,” said Little League Sports director Joe Mulhearn. “We went out recently to meet the team over there and it was stunning to see what they offer.

“It is the ideal learning environment for young up-and-coming coaches and we believe will massively benefit students on our courses.”

As part of the exchange deal, student coaches from Kisakallio will also come over to Liverpool to study and train with Little League Sports to experience football coaching in football’s homeland. Little League runs vocational education courses for coaches across Liverpool, Halton and the Wirral and delivers the Liverpool FC Foundation’s Skills and Drills soccer programme in around 50 Merseyside schools.

“Teaming up with Kisakallio is an exciting development,” said Jordan. “We are working on plans to expand in 2014 and this partnership underlines how well the business is growing.”

For details on the training courses Little League Sports provides and how to apply, visit www.littleleaguesports.org.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Dan Minchin .