Top Tips for Starting Your Football Camp

What do I need to run a football camp?

Football camps can be a great way to keep kids entertained and busy in between term times, and it’s a great injection for your cash flow too! It’s no secret that camps are a firm favourite for a parent’s hectic holiday schedule. Juggling work with holidays and finding ways to keep their kids amused leaves parents seeking out fun and engaging activities. Enter: your football camp!

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Whether it's summer football camps, easter football camps or a weekend youth football camp, we know how in-demand they can be. However, it’s not always clear how you can set up a football holiday camp. So, how do you go about starting a football camp? And how shoudl you go about running a football camp? Read on to find out!

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An easy booking experience goes a long way 

[.pink__text]Flexibility[.pink__text]

With more and more football camps entering the pitch, it’s important that you stand out to parents. One way to do that is to make the booking process super easy for them. This is where using an online booking system comes in hand, as it gives parents all of their options up-front and they can select for themselves in just a few clicks. Allowing parents to book and pay hassle-free saves you time and sets you apart from other football holiday clubs. Check out how the ClassForKids system can help you grow your new football camp!

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[.green__text]Payments[.green__text]

Getting your payments under control when sessions and camps are full is the key to running an organised football camp. Not only will it make sense to everyone involved, but you'll soon eliminate parents that ‘reserve’ spaces and later change their minds, and you’ll avoid endless hours chasing payments! Make it easy for yourself, and for the parents by having parents pay up-front at the time of booking. 

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[.orange__text]Organisation[.orange__text]

With all the excited children buzzing with energy, you don’t need the extra stress of juggling multiple spreadsheets to keep track of all the kids’ information. A good online booking system will allow you to view registrations, medical information and emergency contact details in an instant; meaning you can be confident that your coaches know everything they need to!

What are some fun football camp activities? 

So we know that football camps are a great, profitable idea. But what do you do during a football camp? What activities do the kids want to do? Let’s look at some popular activities to include in your football holiday camp.

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The more obvious answer to this question is to provide the kids with football specific activities. This could be training on specific skills, inviting industry experts to teach the kids or even organising some friendly matches. These are often some of the activities that the kids and their parents will be expecting when they book on for a football camp. However, there are loads of other fun activities you can do to make your football camp stand out a little bit more.

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A good way to get the kids chatting and excited is to do some ice breaker exercises early on in the camp. The goal here is to get the kids involved and getting to know each other with fun and engaging games. Encourage conversations with games like “A Book About Me”, “The Cube” or “Meeting Bingo”! [.blue__text]Read our blog on fun camp activities[.blue__text] for some Ice Breaker Games ideas!

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Although the main purpose of your camp is to teach the kids more about football, your camp doesn’t need to exclude other types of games! Organise some classic camp activities like water fights, scavenger hunts or field days to get the kids active, even when they’re not playing football. Other classic camp activities include talent shows, charades, quizzes or movie nights.

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[.pink__text]Bonus Tip: There are easy ways to incorporate football into classic camp activities if you wish to: feature football-movies or even big matches during movie night, or put on a football-themed quiz![.pink__text]