Appointment of Dundee Cricket Community Coach
The Dundee Cricket Development Group (DCDG) and Cricket Scotland announced today the appointment of a new Community Coach - Richard Rennie - for the city of Dundee. This position has been created by the joint efforts of the different partners in the DCDG, along with the Cricket Scotland Development Trust and includes all the organisations involved with cricket in the City of Discovery.
The Dundee Cricket Development Group was originally established in 2003 by all the senior cricket clubs in Dundee to jointly promote interest and participation in cricket in the city. Originally this centred on maintaining cricket facilities in Dundee and in particular in the public parks.
In recent years the group has been looking at how the clubs could introduce a development program to bring cricket to a new generation of primary school children and to energise the junior set up at all the clubs in Dundee and the surrounding area. Membership of DCDG includes the 3 senior Dundee cricket clubs (Forfarshire, Dundee HSFP and Norwood), the High School of Dundee, Dundee University and Rossie Priory CC from Inchture.
In 2011 the DCDG launched a project to provide Dundee with a full-time, year-round cricket development officer on similar lines to those deployed by other sports throughout Scotland. The group set out to fund, recruit and employ a Cricket Community Coach - as termed by Cricket Scotland - in conjunction with the sport’s governing body. Now that appointment has been finalised and Richard Rennie started work this month.
Richard will work with all the member clubs to develop their junior cricket coaching sections and in schools throughout the city. The goal is to introduce children to cricket at a junior school level, encourage them to join a local club and take their interest on into senior cricket. It is intended that a junior cricket league can be established in Dundee where those new to the sport can play against each other.
The Community Coach will also work with Dundee University and the High School of Dundee to help them provide regular quality coaching as part of their sports curriculum and encourage integration of their players with the local clubs.
The Community Coach will be employed all year round on a average of 22 – 24 hours a week approx. and will utilise the various club and indoor facilities in the city to run year round coaching classes including during the winter close season.
The Community Coach will help organise the junior sections of the local clubs and help them increase overall participation, train volunteer coaches and boost the number of their teams participating in regular competition.
The schools program is aimed at approx 15 schools being involved each year bringing cricket at each school to an average of 40 children - around 600 in total each year. “Taster sessions” will be delivered at each of these primary schools and further coaching will be delivered at the senior clubs by ECB qualified coaches assisted by volunteers.
The junior sections of the member clubs currently number approx 200. It is intended to increase this by 50% after the first 2 years.
The program with the University club should involve around 30 students on a weekly basis.
The Community Coach will be employed by Cricket Scotland and will work closely with Ian Shaw the recently appointed Regional Development Manager for this area in producing an extensive local development plan for year-round cricket in Dundee.
