Youth Sports Club is what we run for young people across north and east Sheffield — free to attend, open to drop in, and built around the things teenagers actually want: a safe space, sport they enjoy, people they can be themselves around. Friday nights, weekday evenings, every week. Burngreave, Firth Park, Darnall.

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It works because the same faces turn up. Same coaches. Same volunteers. Same young people who arrived as new joiners months ago and now bring their friends. That kind of routine is what makes a session feel like a place, not just an activity.

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Sport that moves with the seasons

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Winter pulled the club indoors — badminton and football pulled in young people who'd never have come for cricket alone. A few have stuck and become weekly fixtures. As summer comes in, outdoor cricket steps forward again. The point is to keep showing up for young people whatever the weather, and to keep adding ways in.

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The youth-club side of things runs through the sport, not next to it. Lads arrive early, stick around afterwards, eat together, catch up on the week. The sport is the reason they come — the conversations are why they keep coming. Attendance has held through the dark months, which is the proof that work like this is wanted.

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Workshops that pay forward

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A strength & conditioning programme with Mazin Al Neami (at Warriors HQ), running through the spring. Most young people never get past the doors of a gym — too unsure, too self-conscious, no idea where to start. Mazin teaches the things a private coach charges for: safe lifting form, how to train and recover properly, what to eat, when supplements help, and how to hold yourself accountable to your own goals. The knowledge — and the confidence — holds for life.

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An Emergency First Aid Course delivered by A+D First Aid Training at Shirecliffe Community Centre. Recognised certification, valid for three years — covering CPR, AED use, unconscious casualty response, wounds and bleeding, and common medical conditions. A real CV-grade qualification for young people heading toward college and their first jobs, and a set of skills that travels with them through life.

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An ECB Core Coach course, opening a coaching pathway for older young people and volunteers who've come through our sessions. The qualification puts coaching work within reach — running our own All Stars and Dynamos sessions, leading our Cricket Arena in the Mosques programme over the coming months, coaching Junior Hundred events, and picking up roles at clubs across South Yorkshire. Participant to coach — that's how tomorrow's club gets built, and how the sport keeps giving back.

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Days out of the city

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A hike at Lady Bower. A bike trail at Sherwood Forest. Group days the regulars still talk about — and more booked in for the summer.

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What changes

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The shift you notice over a season isn't on the scoreboard. It's in how young people carry themselves, and how they respond when something doesn't go their way. Mohammed As'ad Ali, one of our workshop leads:

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"Initially some brothers came in and perhaps had some temperamental issues, anger issues. You start to see that there's more control with that. I've seen multiple changes — in their physical abilities, in their mindsets — and that's all through Cricket Arena."

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Calmer responses, stronger friendships, fewer reasons to drift toward the kind of trouble a teenage night can pull a young person into. It's why community sport, done seriously, sits alongside policing and youth services as part of how a neighbourhood looks after its young people.

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Behind it all

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Programme delivery and coaching are led by Jawad Akhtar, an ECB Core Coach, supported by sessional coaches and a volunteer base that turns up week in, week out. Read his piece on why he does what he does.

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Video by Bigger Picture Digital.