Bella’s American Dream
Bella, one of our volunteers at Sheffield United Community Foundation, is hoping to visit Florida to gain valuable experience training and playing football with female professionals at Orlando Pride.
Bella’s dream is to become a professional footballer, and for the last two years has been volunteer coaching younger girls with the same aspirations. Bella helps run a Wildcats session at Leisure United Westfield (Isabel Bowler, S20 8FA), coaching girls aged 5-11 every Friday, 4-5pm.
We featured Bella’s efforts in a case study video last year (see below) and Bella talked about how important coaching the younger girls is for her: “I’ve gained so much confidence with helping the younger girls, like setting out cones and running drills. It’s given me more responsibility and I just enjoy coming down and seeing the kids smiling every week. It’s great seeing the younger girls wanting to play football. It makes me feel so proud and happy.”
Bella says she owes her passion for football to her mum: “My role model is definitely my mum because she’s pushed me ever since I was little. I’ve played football with the boys and I never liked it and she’s always pushed me to keep going no matter what people say.”
Bella recently won the Girls Football Changemaker award, and she is dedicated to inspiring younger girls to take part in football, as well as improving her football coaching. An experience like this will help her development massively.
Shannon Wells, Youth Support Officer at the Foundation said of Bella: “Bella has been with us as a participant on Premier League Kicks for over three years, as well as playing at a high grassroots level and progressing into Derby RTC. We are incredibly proud of Bella’s journey so far in football. Bella quickly became a natural volunteer with the younger girls which developed into weekly voluntary work. She thrives in her confidence and is passionate about everything she does which has made her an integral part of our Empower Women and Girls programme. Bella being chosen to now go to America is a massive achievement at such a young age and I have no doubt Bella will go on to be very successful in whatever she sets her mind to.”
If you would like to help Bella realise her dream, please visit the link below for more information.