Group image of athletes attendign the women and girls session in Arborfield Green

A look at the Women and Girls sessions

3rd August 2023

Off the back of our success at the Womens Cup in Paris earlier this year, and successful women and girl’s sessions at the recent Quad Nations and European Championship events in Cardiff, GBWR are running a women and girls programme. Throughout July 2023, the programme commenced with two sessions being held firstly in the North of England at Sheffield’s English Institute of Sport, and the following week in the South of England at Arborfield Green Leisure Centre.
The sessions were well attended and enjoyed by all participants, with 19 athletes taking to the court and participating across both sessions.
The sessions, led by experienced coach Rob Tarr, were a mixture of skill practices and gameplay, with the southern session also including a short ‘cool-down’ session on the leisure centres bouncy castle while a group of excited 10-year-olds waited patiently to enjoy the rest of their birthday party celebrations.

GBWR will be running further sessions later this year where we hope to include a larger group of female athletes. These will be held in a similar fasion to the July sesisons with one in the North of England and another in the South.
Building on the success of these initial sessions we look forward to an exciting future for the womens game and endeavour to grow the number of women and girls participating in wheelchair rugby within Great Britain.

Take a look at some of the action from the day here

Following the sessions, coach Rob Tarr said:

These sessions open the real diversity of the sport of wheelchair rugby as there is a wide-range of age’s, disabilities and levels of experience from both the Paralympic and the wheelchair rugby fives disciplines.

He went on to say

I have been very privileged to coach both national and International players over the years and watch them perform at the highest level on the world stage but there is equally something special about coaching grassroots players.
The challenges the coach faces are how to plan and facilitate a session that will give such a diverse group of learners the same enjoyable, tactical and technical experience!
My approach has always been through the personal engagement of the participants, setting achievable goals, breaking down the skills and giving praise throughout to motivate their learning.

The coaching reward comes when you see the smiles, hear the positive communication and see the confidence and personal development grow in a player.
I would like to thank all of the ladies who attended these sessions and given their full commitment and enthusiasm to learning new skill-sets to enable them to become a more-rounded team-player.

Participants from the sessions commented