Sheffield children’s football academy keeps thousands active during lockdown

Kixx Sheffield, which is owned by former Rotherham United star, Jamie Green, had to quickly revise the way they delivered academy sessions to continue to keep their young members active and having fun during the nation’s lockdown.

Since the national lockdown announcement in March which meant families have been staying indoors, Kixx have been releasing engaging and interactive football academy sessions on Facebook every weekend.

Throughout each week they have also been setting fun challenges, providing continuous activities for free and even reading popular children's bedtime stories.

Ben Hunter, founder of Kixx UK, said: “We took the decision to stop all training sessions a week before the national announcement to protect our children, members and reduce large gatherings.

“All members have since had their payments cancelled and refunds for that month have been provided.

“Over the last 9 years, Kixx has built a fantastic community across the country with over 10,000 members that attended our sessions, every single week.

“We care for our community very much and wanted to show how much they are valued by continuing to provide our sessions, for free and online.

“This situation has kept all children indoors and not just our members, so we wanted to create content that was free and accessible for all young children to enjoy.

“After all we are in this together and its important that children stay active during this time.”

He added that the feedback from parents across the country has been ‘incredible’, with videos averaging around 20k hits each and growing all the time in popularity as the word is spreading about their sessions.

Jamie Green, Head Coach at Kixx Sheffield said: “The comments and emails received since the launch of the online sessions have been very humbling.

“Although we had to revise our methods very quickly, we still wanted to do things the Kixx way. Each video and session we put out has a theme and story has been continuing throughout.

“There’s been a fun rivalry building up since the first session between one of our Coaches and our national mascot, The Kixx Monkey, and children and truly love watching this story play out.

“Each session has been put together to keep children active and to make them laugh and smile throughout. It’s our mission to keep putting together the free sessions and keep positively impacting as many children can until we return.”

Due to the amount of enquires received during lockdown, Kixx has reopened its memberships for children to secure their places before the academies relaunch.

All children receive a free football kit with every membership and members will not be charged the monthly academy fee until the academies re-open.

To watch all the latest free online sessions, visit shorturl.at/hmpGV​​​​​​​​​​​​​​.

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