Since Hillfoots Vixens were set up in September 2023 by scrum-half/stand-off Christina Swinton and head coach Jordan Usher things have gone from strength-to-strength.
And the recent award of an Aldi Sports Bursary has only helped that and left everyone involved with the Vixens enthusiastic ahead of 2025.
“Myself and head coach Jordan Usher started the Vixens in September 2023 after we first met earlier that summer,” Swinton said.
“We share the same values when it comes to women’s rugby and decided to start our own team and, luckily, we had backing from Hillfoots RFC.
“We had six women at our first training session and it very quickly grew to the 40 plus we have now. The girls section started a couple months after the women, and we’re seeing an average of 12 to 15 girls aged 12 and over coming down every week.
“For the women, our aim was to get into a league after our first year and we’ve just finished 5th out of 8 teams in the Caledonia Midlands East Two division.
“In terms of the Aldi Sports Bursary, well I saw an advert on Facebook for the bursary a few months ago and discussed it with Jordan.
“We didn’t think we’d have much chance of winning, but I decided to put an application in anyway. It then slipped my mind that I had applied as we got so caught up with preparing for the league season beginning.
“Then the email came through saying we had been awarded an Aldi Sports Bursary and as soon as I saw it I sent a screenshot to Jordan – I couldn’t believe we had actually won it!
“It’s taken a lot of work behind the scenes to get the team to where we are – many, many hours of admin and applications for funding – so to win the Aldi Sports Bursary meant so much to all of us.
“Since we started we’ve been focused on the branding of the team, so some of the money from the bursary went towards kitting out players and we will be looking to order kit for our juniors in the near future too so they can represent the club at festivals.
“In this economic climate, any financial support we can get for the club makes a huge difference so the bursary definitely gave us a boost. We also received an Aldi gift card so we used that to purchase some goodies for a night in for all the Vixens to come together.
“Of course, it’s not all about the money and part of winning the bursary included Team GB Paralympian Toni Shaw joining us for a training session.
“It was so lovely to meet her and great to see a crossover between swimming and rugby.”
Exciting times then and plenty going on.
“Having completed our first league campaign we’re so excited to continue building this team,” Swinton continued.
“It’s already become more than we had hoped it would by this stage, we’ve not only got an amazing group of women playing rugby, but we’ve also built a sisterhood for these women.
“We set out to create a safe space for women to come and forget about their everyday stresses, where they can make new friends and socialise while getting fitter and a lot of the time the rugby’s just an added bonus!
“I can say with confidence that we’ve built a very trustworthy and caring community that I hope will continue to attract women and girls to get involved. Our next challenge will be the National Plate in the new year.
The juniors are our biggest supporters too, showing up to all of the Vixens’ games home and away, volunteering to be water girls and cheering us on.
“It’s great that they can see a pathway into adult rugby and look up to the women’s team aspiring to wear our kit one day.”
Thanks to Hillfoots Vixens for the images
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