Tara Murray
The Football Victoria season isn’t even finished and West Point is starting to prepare for next season.
After massive growth in its female program in the past couple of years, West Point is focused on growing it further, especially with the women’s World Cup coming to Australia.
Club secretary Guillaume Nollet is hoping to complete the playing pathway for females at the club.
“We want a playing pathway to allow girls to play at West Point from three-years-old all the way to seniors by adding a senior side and potentially an under-18 team to the female teams,” he said.
“We’re also looking to have the specific role of female coordinator to help develop and oversee all matters relating to female soccer within the club and obviously we want a woman in this role as dad or male unfortunately still do not understand everything about girls.”
The club is currently one of the biggest teams in Wyndham with 29 teams, including seven junior girls teams from under-8s through to under-15s.
Nollet said female teams had never been the focus of the club previously. He said when the club participated in a Football Victoria initiative last year, Change Makers Project, which was set up to drive participation and improve experiences for women and girls.
Nollet said while they scored really well in the review, it was something they hadn’t pushed.
“Personally I have been coaching my son since 2016 and I was the first one to say girls did not want to play soccer until my daughter asked me to play last year and see how motivated she was,” he said.
“It is when I realised girls wanted to play. They want to play but for different reasons than boys… it is more a social-fun event, their friends from school or best friends are here.
“They want to get fit or because it is fun.”
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