Laura Davies

Growing up, I was very sporty, very active. I was in every team, boys and girls, and football was my main passion. That was the route I definitely wanted to go down. 

Unfortunately, especially in North Wales at that time, we're talking about 18 years ago now, there wasn't a lot of opportunities for female football. Completely different story to nowadays where there's a lot of opportunities. 

I saw an Easter football event at Wrexham University. So I thought, yeah, I'm going to go for that, give it a go. 

I went along and it was actually advertising for a university degree, which the lecturer spoke to me about afterwards. And I thought, Nah, I can't do that. I didn't go to college, I can't go to university. But, it turned out amazingly. I had brilliant support, especially with my health through the university and the lecturers and, yeah, I applied to the Football Coaching Performance Specialist degree and was successful! 

My time at Wrexham University definitely helped increase my confidence, especially in applying for internships and jobs in the industry, To be honest with you, if I'd have seen this internship or the job I'm about to go into, I probably wouldn't have applied without going to university or without having that experience and knowledge in the background of that role, but also the support I received from my tutors.  

So, for example, going over my CV, we did, modules or we Practice interviews, all that was really helpful - and group work was so beneficial.  

You don't realise it at the time, but once you leave, you understand that actually most of these sport roles you're going to go into do involve groups and teams, and learning how to manage those teams and how to work in a team is incredibly beneficial for when you go into your career. 

So I'm in the grassroots department at the Football Association of Wales (FAW)  and my roles is kind of leading on the day to day running of the UA for Disney Playmakers programme, which is a programme that's been implemented throughout Wales for girls age five to eight in primary schools and it's very innovative. 

So, they learnt to play football through storytelling and the magic of Disney. I also work on the Huddle again, lead the Day to Day on the Huddle programme, and this is a community based programme, so it's run by clubs and a couple of sport development teams are also providers. And this is to get girls aged four to eleven in the community active playing football, but in a fun female environment where there's no competition and it's not your typical training session. It's very tailored to those girls. 

So I also support on other programmes such as the B-Football programme and the ‘Environments for her’ programme, and also any women or girls participation projects that arise. I support on those.