Schools to score for indoor soccer success

STUDENTS and young sporting club members are set to go head-to-head as part of Futsal Ballarat’s regular competition aimed at seeing high schools throughout the region take to the court.

With the organisation’s secondary student competition set to begin on Friday 6 October, Futsal Ballarat general manager Bailey Burgess said they’re still looking for more institutions.

“Five is the minimum for the team but we try to get each to have seven members,” he said.

“We’re looking to get to the 10-to-12-team mark to make the competition viable and create that variety in playing a different team every week.

“Currently, we have about eight teams interested and we’re trying to get as many possible involved over the next few weeks.”

Students from St Patrick’s, Woodmans Hill, and Damascus colleges have so far signed up as well as soccer club members from Daylesford.

Running on Friday evenings at Woodmans Hill Secondary College’s gym, each session is set to entail about four timeslots of 40-minute games.

Burgess said the competition is about building pathways for older junior players.

“We’re wanting to create a platform for kids in that under 13 to under 18s range,” he said.

“We’ve obviously got a lot of competitions and training facilitating the juniors and primary schools age groups but we’re really trying to put a keen interest at the secondary groups.

“It’s about giving them those pathways and something to continue on with after grade 6 and idolise looking forward to the older kids playing.”

“Based on how we set things up for our junior comp, we want to make this as a big talent pool to look at individual players, form a representative team of the best, and look at state and national championships.”

To register for the competition, as well as Futsal Ballarat’s first junior girls competition starting Monday 2 October, visit the organisation’s website.