COMMUNITY sport is about to make waves on the Mornington Peninsula again, with the Mornington Peninsula Junior Football League in the process of building its numbers and reconnecting with schools for a great season ahead.
The league’s administrator, Ben Lawrence, said sport had taken a huge hit over the last few seasons, and the league was in a fight to keep participation rates at a steady number.
It is about to roll out a project called the MPJFL School Network, which involves interacting with schools to promote the benefits of playing organised community sport.
Mr Lawrence said the MPJFL was a community-focused organisation committed to creating positive experiences for junior participants, and tangible participation outcomes for clubs, like it has done for 51 years.
“As we come out of covid, our league and our clubs are always looking for new players to sign up and play football within the MPJFL,” he said.
The league is made up of 14 clubs that stretch across the peninsula and offers age groups from under 9s (starting at 7) to under 17s boys and under 18s girls.
Mr Lawrence said playing organised community sport came with many benefits for children and young adults, teaching important life skills and greatly impacting on participants physical, emotional, social, and mental health.
“To be proactive and try to stimulate registrations, we are launching the ‘MPJFL School Network’, which is a program that has been offered to all schools in the Mornington peninsula region,” he said.
“The MPJFL School Network is our way of establishing relationships with schools on the Mornington Peninsula and we are extremely excited to roll it out in the coming weeks.”
Mr Lawrence said the ‘School Network’ was the starting point in having more interaction with schools, and provided schools at no cost with promotional material, MPJFL footballs, facilitation of a coaching workshop for PE department staff, and a three-week curriculum-based program labelled the ‘MPJFL Footy Carnival’, which will lead into Round 1 and hopefully generate interest.
“This is an extremely important time period for community sport, and we need to ensure that kids in our region are getting active and playing organised sport,” he said.
Anyone looking for a club, or wanting more information about playing footy, can visit www.mpjfl.com.au/clubs