Sikh Union Coventry

YOUTH DEVELOPMENT - Roots

Since the start, the club has seen many changes all for the better. In terms of players it has also seen a lot of migration in and out for various reasons, players leaving Coventry for job reasons, players moving to other clubs, mergers with other clubs bringing more players etc. The net effect of this has been that the membership which remained loyal to the club was very gradually going over the hill. The distinct lack of youth policy and hence the youth membership meant that there was no one to replace the senior players. Even if the club did get youngsters they would require training and in any case there was also going to be that big gap between the youngsters and the senior players. In the summer of 2000 it was generally felt that something needed to be done very urgently.

A very solid 5 year plan was drafted by and the inaugural date of Tuesday 5 September 2000 was set. The initial training sessions were attended by just three youngsters. It was an unfortunate winter in that we had the worst weather ever witnessed. It rained non-stop, But this did not stop the youngsters the resilience of these youngsters was surprising. They continued to attend the training session's week in week out. Gradually the numbers grew. The junior membership as of 25 July 2002 is 24. The junior membership is mainly drawn from within the Club for example sons of existing members. Now that the youth development program has started we are looking for funds in order to keep the program alive and get more membership. There are potential sponsors on the horizon.

The good news is that since the start of the youth policy there seems to be a sense of new and fresh life within the Club. The senior players are a credit to the club in that they have kept on playing in the leagues from which they should have retired years ago, but this is what kept the club going. In another 3 to 5 years the youngsters will be coming through to take the place of the senior member. The lifeline of Sikh Union has started.

Kuljit Sembhi

Going forward...

All the hard work that was started by Kuljit in 2000 is now bearing fruit as 80% of the 1st and 2nd teams are now all from our youth development programme, whilst the third team now feature mostly of the new crop of youngsters that have been training with us over the last couple of years with the dedicated help of Pepsi Ghataura, Swede, Jon Colson, Narinder Mann and Ricky Dhanjal.