Bakewell Town set up first ladies team in their history

Town have announced plans to have girls side’s competing from age eight up to a senior ladies' side.

It forms part of a master vision to develop the club as a key part of the community.

Chairman Dave cotterill said: “It’s part of a bigger vision really. We currently have 12 teams playing at Bakewell and before the lockdown we didn’t have any girls teams.

“We’ve now got a group of 18 U13’s and a team of 17 ladies that have come to join us all of different abilities and experience. Some have never played and some have played a lot.

“Our plan for next year is to have 21 teams and the major growth in that is to have a girls team in every age group from U8’s right through to our ladies first team.

“This is a bit of a tip of the pyramid upside down really, at our first stage of recruitment we seem to have recruited ladies before younger girls.

“The idea would be to build from the foundations upwards really and to be looking to compete when some of the youngsters come through the program and get developed.

“At this stage, we’ll take these ladies as far as they want to go and as far as we can take them.

“We’ll be playing friendlies for the next three or four months with the intention of joining the league at the start of next season.”

Former Chesterfield FC Women Development manager Tom Wells-Lomas has been named manager of the new ladies side.

He has now begun the task of gelling a team together for when competitive action can begin.

“The Future is certainly exciting for both the club and the community that surrounds it,” he said.

“I’m especially excited to be a part of the town’s history in bringing the first ladies side to the town.

“The priority for me is to try and keep the close community feeling in tact and to certainly represent the town in the correct way.”

“I’m also really wanting to extend that into giving coaches a place to develop their skills as well.

“As much as I’d like to hope the first team will be able to compete with their opponents on a weekly basis, I think we need to also build a great place to develop players that will continue to feed into the first team for years to come.

“It’s a tough one, with the current situation surrounding Covid-19 we have to take every week as it comes.

“I don’t think the ladies are miles away from being ready to play some games, hopefully we can get something sorted before the new year.”