Blazing a trail

This blog piece is one I've promised to happen and here it is, the first of two about this particular level of football.

Pictured above is Needham Market Women first team and you might wonder why they're the subject of this piece. Well, the story is this! I follow on Twitter over 3000 people, fairly decent amount and there has been blog pieces on a small percentage of that number. A couple of months ago whilst scrolling through my timeline, I saw something that caught my eye.

Freya Louis has a family history of involvement in sport, I'm pleased to say I watched her father race a few times for Hackney Speedway when I was growing up, a very consistent rider in my opinion, her grandfather John also was the team manager at that time. But, football is not speedway and no where near as dangerous!

The women's game as we know is one of the fastest growing areas of the game and ladies teams are becoming more and more commonly attached to the senior men's clubs as time goes on. At the beginning of the 2018-19 season Louis was appointed first team manager of the Market Ladies and success hasn't been in short supply with two cup finals and runners-up spot in the league, pretty impressive for a first campaign and all at the age of just 22.

This stand-out performance has seen Freya handed another role at the club as the Academy Girls and Ladies Development Manager to run alongside her first team role, all this while holding down a full time job, the football side is all volunteer based like so many of us in the grassroots game, you have to wonder where she's going to get the hours from!

What is clear when reading the club article on her latest appointment and also her blog, which I'll come to later on, is the passion she has for others to succeed as footballers, for one of such a young age when you naturally consider managers to be 'older and experienced' you can feel the breath of fresh air as you read her words and me well I come away reading it thinking this club are pretty lucky to have her.

As mentioned Freya has a blog, the link I'll post below for you to go and have a read for yourself. Her hashtag #HappyGafferBlog takes that positive thought forward, as a blogger myself I made a promise to myself to read more blogs from other people, appreciate what others have to say. Freya's blog gives me a different perspective from the ladies side of the game, one I like to read to help broaden the knowledge and give me those views.

What you can read in her blog is a fight against mental health issues, another thing I like to champion because anyone can suffer from it, men or women and it needs to be spoken about to reduce it's impact, it's ok to not be ok. In Freya's case you can read the struggle and to me when you read this blog piece and to see where she has gotten herself to now, in my mind it's inspirational for anyone.

You will also see she has big plans for the future for her club, ones you can see her fulfilling if it progresses at the speed its currently moving at and you sense there is fierce determination to achieve it, I'm finding it a great story to follow!

You can find Freya's blog at www.freyalouis.com