Youth Ambassador Case Studies

Ben Mitchell - Digital & Vice-Chair

My roles as a Youth Ambassador are Vice-Chair and Digital & IT. Early on in the programme, we made a Twitter page for the group. The idea of this was so that we could connect with young people in a different way. The way we use Twitter has been factored into a “Long term media coverage plan” that is focused around how we can have the most impact on young people through social media. Part of this plan is based around raising awareness of what some young people may see as barriers preventing them being involved in football. We want to inspire them by sharing the experiences of other young people, including our Ambassadors, in the hope that this inspires them to love the game.

I am also involved in attending Scotland National Youth Team games as part of our long-term coverage plan, which is a great experience that allows me to see how the Digital team work. In my other role as Vice-Chair, I have been involved in the planning of Youth Congress and worked with the other Ambassadors, ensuring that they are supported in their various roles. As a Youth Ambassador, I have also been part of the Scottish FA Para-Football working group.

In my time as an ambassador we have been able to reach a wide audience with content we have put on our Twitter page and aimed to show that football can be accessible for anyone. I hope that the young people seeing us in our roles as Youth Ambassadors can be inspired by the work we are doing and that this can keep them involved or encourage them into wanting to get involved in football, in any capacity. We aim to show young people that what they perceive as barriers, we perceive as opportunities to get involved in football.

I believe this programme allows us to provide young people with a platform from which the voices of young people, including me, can be heard within Scottish football. The positive work being done by all the Ambassadors can help inspire more young people to get involved in football.

Vikki Allan - Refereeing

I currently Referee in Scotland domestically and internationally, being a young referee in Scotland I am delighted to have this role and give a voice to the younger people in Scotland. I feel it’s important to let the young people in Scotland have a voice to shape the future of Scottish Football.

So far I have been involved in a few projects: International Women’s day where this year we showcased the female ambassadors, cerebral palsy awareness month in which a parent got in touch with us to find out where their child could join a cerebral palsy league, a record breaking match on top of Kilimanjaro to raise awareness of gender equality in sports and setting up of the youth representatives across the Referee Associations in Scotland.

These 12 representatives are a great step forward in refereeing for young people, giving them a voice locally which can then feed up to myself to feed directly into Scottish FA. This allows them to feedback positives they see at a local level but also where they think there is room for improvement. This hopefully allows us to recruit but especially retain these young referees when they join the refereeing family. Football is growing at a rapid pace but to have a game of football you need referees so I feel it is extremely important that we support the younger generation coming through to come into this side of the sport.

Lyall Cameron - Football Development

Lyall Cameron – Football Development

My name is Lyall Cameron and I am the Youth Ambassador associated with the Football Development department. When I was first introduced to the department, the objective was to get more people involved in football. This area of participation covered both engagement and retention. It was decided that participation under retention, specifically drop-out of teenagers between the ages of 15-19, would be my area of focus.

Engagement within this category came about for many reasons, specifically when I reflect over previous experiences of being involved in the SFA School of Football programmes between 2010 and 2013. Introduced by the Scottish FA in partnership with the Government, the School of Football programme was a new initiative, which involved boys and girls training every day as part of their school curriculum. Thinking about the boys I trained with day in day out, I realised that out of the sixteen that were selected in the three-year programme, only four remain playing the game. Twelve boys, 75% of the programme who all showed potential to play football at a high level, somewhere along the line made the decision that playing football was no longer for them - all before the age of 19.

Furthermore, researching into the number of registered players within Scotland and discovering that although there is a greater population within this age range compared to younger ages, there are fewer people playing registered football. While I am  currently in this age bracket and experiencing the dropout of friends and teammates first hand, this information sparked an interest into the reasons behind their decisions to leave the game.

This identified two questions. Were the reasons mutual with dropouts elsewhere? And what could be done to prevent these reasons becoming a reality for future players?

With the ambition to prevent players leaving the game, over the next few months I intend to thoroughly research this area of participation and hopefully answer these questions. A survey and personal conversations targeting teenagers who have dropped out will be our method of identifying the reasons behind their departure.

Working towards identifying these barriers will hopefully give us a clear indication into what areas of our game need improvement. This will be beneficial for young players that still participate within football. Making changes related to the reasons behind previous dropouts will hopefully prevent or reduce the number of players experiencing the same problems in the future then eventually losing interest in the game. The whole aim of the project is to keep young players involved so that they can enjoy playing the game and develop to the best of their ability.