On Thursday 30th May, Crystal Palace Academy hosted our Elite & Development Centres for some friendly fixtures at the East Grinstead Sport Centre.
We invited 2 or 3 teams from each age group from U7’s to U13’s, which for some of our participants was their first experience in friendly or competitive fixtures.
The tournament started at 10 am with our U7’s team and U8’s team who played against our Crystal Palace equivalent. Each team played 6 matches, which were all highly competitive for their 6-a-side matches.
From 12pm our U9’s, U10’s and U11’s teams played their 6-a-side matches against Crystal Palace Academy.
These fixtures were a fantastic experience for our participants, having the opportunity to play skill matched and competitive fixtures. As a result, giving them the opportunity to discover their strengths and weaknesses in a match.
Many of these players were excited to be a part of this fantastic opportunity. This gave them great experience and practice to finish the season.
To finish the day, from 2pm our U12’s & U13’s played 6 matches against their Crystal Palace competitors.
The U12’s & U13’s played 6-a-side fixtures, having a small game team didn’t stop them from putting their all into every single match.
Jack, one of our long-standing players said this about the Elite & Development Centres, “I first started playing with Crawley when I was 7 years old. The coaches have really helped me develop my skills as a player. To be given the opportunity to play in the fixtures against Crystal Palace was an amazing experience.”
Our participants played really well across the day, all of them had smiles on their faces. The fixtures gave the participants the opportunity to showcase their skills learnt across the season.
Callum Agent, Schools Development Officer and Elite & Development Coach said this about the fixtures, “The Crystal Palace was a great fixture and challenge for our players. I think they handled it extremely well, playing some great football and impressing both us and the Crystal Palace coaches. They showed great skill and sportsmanship in all the games and were great role models for all of the other players in the Elite and Development.”
Overall, even though it wasn’t a competitive tournament, the coaches were really proud of every players efforts in the matches and I think all the participants can say it was a fantastic experience to finish off the season.
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