Marjon’s high performance centre trains potential lionesses

Released: 02.12.21

Three football players who have been supported by the Marjon FA Women’s High Performance Football Centre, Mia Endacott, Ellie Sara, and Mari Ward, are on to great things after being selected to attend the U15 and U16 England Talent Camps as part of the FA's Regional Talent Strategy. The football centre has been supporting four local girls with performance services including tailored weekly physical performance sessions, sports psychology, education, and wellbeing, to support in their football development.

Marjon is one of nine FA Women’s High-Performance Football Centres (WHPFC) at universities across the country. It provides an educational and community-based setting to recruit, develop, deploy and produce quality coaches, who in turn can inspire player development. Because of this, Plymouth Argyle Women’s team use Marjon’s facilities to train.

After Ellie and Mari were selected for the most recent Women’s U16 camp, they have both been called into the upcoming 5-day camp at St Georges Park stadium, the home of the England team, in December. They have been selected from players all over England. Under 16s is the first international age group you can represent England Women, to develop future lionesses. 

 Mia has been called into the last two National Talent Camps for U15 players.  The National Talent Camp provides events to identify U15 and U14 players who show international potential and offers a three day 'England experience' camp, hosted at Warwick university.

The National Talent Camp and England U16 camp provide players with a holistic education on what is required, at their age, to support them in their ambitions to become a senior Lioness.  This will cover education both on and off the pitch, including technical and tactical as well as wellbeing and recovery.

 A key aim of the FA's Regional Talent Strategy is to ensure talent reaches opportunity, no matter where you live. This ensures that players with the potential to do so can represent England at the highest level of the game. on the FA Talent Legacy Group, alongside Marjon are partners such as Plymouth Argyle FC Community Trust, Devon FA, and Plymouth Inclusive Schools Partnership. The group focuses on broadening opportunities in Plymouth over the 2021/22 season, to discover talented female players aged 10-16 years.

Senior FA Women’s Talent Technical Coach (South West), Sarah Lawler Edwards, says: “The Marjon FA Women’s High Performance Football Centre is extremely important to the region as it bridges a geographical gap for key services required to support talented female players who are involved in the Women’s England Talent Pathway.  Having these players selected for England Pathway Camps is testament to the fantastic work being done here to develop players.”

As part of the performance services that the Marjon High Performance Centre offers, players are provided with support to help them build psychological skills and navigate the demands faced in balancing sport and education. Sport psychology sessions are tailored around each player, considering their individual needs and supporting long-term development.

Lecturer in Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation, Vicki Evans, says “Providing strength and conditioning and rehabilitation services to these individuals has allowed them to understand their own physical capabilities and for us to devise individual programmes to tailor to their weaker areas. The players have demonstrated dedication through a difficult 18 months and shown improvements their physical performance which has transferred onto the pitch”

Marjon offer a range of sports courses, including BA (Hons) Football Development and Coaching and BSc (Hons) Sport Rehabilitation and Conditioning. View them all here.