Following a meeting yesterday, the Club is delighted to announce an exciting new project in partnership with Glencryan School in Cumbernauld. Glencryan caters for children with special educational needs. 

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We are currently focusing on developing and implementing a bespoke coaching programme to be delivered to pupils in the primary school during school hours and, potentially, an after school club.

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Manager Jimmy Boyle commented: ‘I was impressed with the school and its facilities and am delighted to be able to provide coaching to these pupils. There has been a lot written recently about the ‘armchair’ lifestyle of kids these days and we plan to help change this by providing encouragement to exercise regularly as well as more informed lifestyle choices regarding diet, the need for teamwork and having some fun.

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We will be working with the school to develop a pilot over the next few weeks. This will run through to the end of the school year, followed by a full year programme in 2013/14.’

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Club director Rose Ballantyne, who was raised just along the road from Glencryan, said:

‘We’ve been planning to start focusing more on the local community, but with limited resources at the Club and all that is going on in football at the moment, these things can be difficult to achieve. 

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However, funding recently became available from the Scottish Government to help clubs wanting to kick-start a community initiative and we are delighted to make use of that with the great coaching resources that we have available to us.

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Glencryan is a very good first project for us to focus on and, over time as we gain experience in such matters, we hope to work with other local schools and worthy causes.

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And if some of the children become Airdrie supporters that will be an added benefit - we certainly won’t discourage that!’