Rafael van der Vaart launched a new satellite session of the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation’s Premier League 4 Sport programme at Chace Community School in Enfield this week.
The Dutch international took part in table tennis and football skills sessions with local kids, while there was also an appearance from Spurs’ world-renowned football freestyler, Billy Wingrove.
Van der Vaart, the Club’s big summer signing from Real Madrid who has scored 11 goals in 18 appearances since arriving, said:
“It was great to meet the kids and get involved in some of the fun games they were playing. The coaches do a brilliant job to make the lessons enjoyable and it’s a perfect way to get more and more young people playing sport.”
Premier League 4 Sport was launched by then Prime Minister Gordon Brown at Tottenham Hotspur’s Spurs Lodge training ground in January, 2009.
Since then, top flight football clubs in England have been linking up with sports clubs in their communities to offer local young people the chance to take part in the following four Olympic sports:
– Badminton
– Judo
– Table Tennis
– Volleyball
Each sport has at least four satellite clubs that run after school activities and provide opportunities for young people to develop their skills with fully qualified coaches. Through these satellite clubs there is then the possibility for individuals to feed into established community hub clubs to further develop their potential.
The initiative supports the Government’s ambition to offer young people five hours of sport per week as part of its 2012 legacy plans and also aims to address the drop-off in levels of sports participation when young people leave secondary school.
Tottenham Hotspur Foundation have been working with community sports clubs across North East London since the summer of 2009 to make its version of Premier League 4 Sport a success.
The programme won the Coaching Intervention of the Year Award at the 2010 UK Coaching Awards, while there have been prestigious recent awards for two of the programme’s community coaches.
For more information, please contact:
Tony Stevens – Press Office – 07818 091 387