On the 16th October 2017, we were extremely excited to receive an email from Ed Bartram at Active Sussex, to tell us that we had been nominated for the Community Impact Award category at the Sussex Sports Awards 2017!  We still don’t know who nominated us but if you’re reading this, thank you very much!

From hundreds of nominations, the Panel of Judges from Active Sussex used a scoring system to assess applications to shortlist three Finalists in each category. The three highest scoring nominations were announced on Friday 20 October and invited to attend the Awards Evening as VIP guests.  We were one of the Finalists!  The other two projects in the Witness BTN Community Impact Award were “Beat the Street” (East Sussex County Council) and START Wellbeing.

We were treated to some great hospitality and it was amazing to see the impact that sport is having in Sussex.

We also listened intently to Invictus Games competitor, Mike Goody, explain how he overcame daily struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder after he lost his left leg in Afghanistan and how he rebuilt his life with his love of swimming to compete in the Inaugural Invictus Games.

Unfortunately, we didn’t win the Award but were extremely proud to be selected as a Finalist and receive a Finalist’s Certificate.  Congratulations to the winner START Wellbeing!

It was also fantastic to read plenty of tweets on the night, some of which are below:

The power of sport makes great things happen and has enabled us to inspire and encourage other “old girls” to participate in learning to play football, with new ladies still joining so we will keep promoting and enjoying the journey which doesn’t seem to be slowing down!