East Kilbride Rugby Club’s women’s section are celebrating after scoring a £10,000 grant from Royal London.
As a founding partner of The British and Irish Lions Women, pension and investments firm Royal London is funding a new grant scheme for the grassroots game and EK are one only four clubs across the UK – and the only from Scotland – to receive the grant to invest in their women and girls’ programmes.
The annual ‘Championing Women and Girls’ Rugby Award’ recognises outstanding clubs and EK has seen significant growth since 2022, particularly due to its outreach, education and social programmes, including special support of parents.
The club works hard to develop female coaches and referees, with significant female representation in these roles, as well as on the committee.
Women’s convenor Elaine Martin is thrilled to see the club pick up the grant and said it will be used to upgrade facilities at Torrance House.
She said: “We demonstrated that we had grown our senior ladies team from one player in 2022 to sitting around 50 players, with ages ranging from 18 years to 50 plus.
“We are offering females the opportunity of doing some fitness and to be involved in our team and play rugby. New friendships have been made over the past few years and, with alot of the players having children, we look after them on game days if they come and watch their mums playing on the field.
“We put our application in with the aim to upgrade the shower room that the females use at East Kilbride Sports Club. We promoted that we had hosted two charity events in 2022 and 2024 for Inflammatory Breast Cancer, with over 100 females attending both events.
“We are now working with primary schools and high schools to increase our numbers in the girls section and have managed to field an U14 team for a few games this season.
“We need these young girls to play through the age groups so we have a conveyor belt of new players coming into our Women’s section.”
Any young girl or women looking to get involved with the club should contact them on Instagram via ekrfc_girls_rugby, ekrfcwomens_rugby or contact Elaine Martin on 07929 106381.
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