Two netball clubs based in Brighton and Worthing undertook an incredibly successful one-hour shoot-a-thon in a bid to raise much needed funds for the Rockinghorse Children’s Charity.
The clubs, Pied Piper and NRG, provide netball coaching and take part in regular competitive league and friendly matches across Sussex.
During the current lock-down, the clubs haven’t been able to take part in any of their usual activities or training sessions so decided to help support an idea from Bobbi and Liberty Sancha, pupils at Brighton Girls.
A great idea
The girls’ mum Alex explained how the idea came about; “Bobbi was really missing her regular netball training sessions with all her friends at Pied Piper so we wanted to try and think of how we could get everyone together. I was also aware that funding for Rockinghorse had been severely affected due to having so many of their usual events cancelled so we wanted to try and raise some money in the process.
Bobbie and Liberty came up with the idea of seeing how many goals everyone could score in an hour and getting sponsorship for each one so we created a flyer and spoke to the netball clubs and Rosie McColl, the Head at Brighton Girls, to see if they could help us get the word out there.”
Victoria Lacey, from Pied Piper, thought it was a wonderful idea; “We have been doing regular ‘virtual’ training sessions for the girls but thought this was a good way to set them a challenge and have some fun. We organised a group Zoom call and off they went!
We were amazed at how all the girls stepped up, most of them shooting for the whole hour despite the inevitable cricked necks from looking up so much!”
What a result!
What started as a bit of fun and a way to get the girls doing something as a group ended up raising over £3,500 for Rockinghorse. All together 45 girls took part from both netball clubs and pupils from Brighton Girls, scoring over 26,000 goals in total.
All the girls got sponsorship from their families and Victoria added the extra incentive to the Pied Piper members of the club giving an additional £100 if they scored over 10,000 goals.
This initiative just goes to show what can be achieved from a simple idea. So, if you have any ideas for fundraising that your local sports teams could get involved with, just contact Hollie Trezise, Schools and Community Fundraising Manager, at hollie@rockinghorse.org.uk and look out for our new ‘Go for Goals’ fundraising pack.
