Laces in Lockdown

Like everyone else in March 2020, Laces went virtual. We held our usual Thursday night sessions online, focussing on fitness and ball skills - with some girls using the much coveted toilet roll as their football at first, before Nike kindly gifted us some.

We also partnered with Nike and the design agency AKQA to create a deck of Queens, featuring daily challenges to keep the Laces family together even through lockdown. Each card featured a suggestion of how players can look after their physical and mental health, an essential piece of normality when a lot of things were beyond our control. The Jacks, Queens and Kings were replaced with female Fans, Captains and Managers. Cards in the club suit (since we are a club…) even featured words of wisdom from some of our amazing coaches:

By the time the second lockdown came around in November, the novelty of virtual sessions had worn off. We knew that, facing another lockdown this January, we would have to think of a different way we could recreate the atmosphere of our training sessions from home. Playing football together can be competitive, but above all else it is fun. So we captured that in the Laces Lockdown League, and over the coming weeks we’ll be setting fun challenges for the girls to complete in teams captained by our Laces coaches. The challenges will be creative, physical or mindlessly silly (get ready to see some questionable TikTok dances) so everyone has their role to play, just like on the pitch. We’ll be inviting special guests to judge our entries and awarding amazing prizes to the winners each week (safe to say the girls are buzzing at the prospect of a pizza party!).

There has not been a lot of things for us all to get excited about lately, but we hope that these challenges will give us some much needed distraction in the next few weeks. And bring us closer to the pitch one step at a time.