Posts in category: Ambassador

My name is Georgia Martin and I am a graduate from the University of Bath, where i earned a BSc in Sports Performance. As a passionate sportswoman I came to Bath as an aspiring Olympic athlete and I came away as a person who wants to champion change.

I have been an athlete for most of my life, for years it was all I ever knew. For ten years I was a swimmer, but when talent spotted, I joined the British Rowing World Class START programme at the age of 16. START identifies and develops high-potential athletes to become Olympic rowers. For the next four years, I trained 20-hour weeks while studying. In that time, I represented England and won at Henley Royal Regatta. When injury led to the end of my rowing career, I put my training time to a different use, and I am now venturing onto things i have never dreamed of before.  

I came across KickOff@3 when researching my dissertation, which is looking into youth crime and how sports-based crime prevention programmes can help to reduce crime. Specifically, into the impact mentors have on young people. Kickoff@3 stood out to me because of its ethos, everything about it is so selfless and done with such passion that I was truly inspired. When Michael mentioned that he is working on SwimOff@3, my eyes lit up because swimming is where I started as an athlete. I was inspired to help and that is what I hope to do as a volunteer. I want to use this platform to enhance my understanding of the impact of this programme, but mainly to work with and inspire young people.

I am hoping to join the police and i believe in kickoff@3, therefore I hope that wherever I end up being a police officer I can implement the kickoff@3 ethos.

Growing up in Belfast during the troubles, Catrina was always conscious of the effects of inequality and how it negatively impacted on individuals and how it devastated communities. Even though it was a tough place to live she loved growing up in Belfast and her life experiences there definitely shaped her strong “fiery” character. She comes from a large close family who all still live in and around Belfast.

She left home and moved to England aged 16 to seek other opportunities due to the multi layered challenges she faced at home.  Life in England wasn’t easy for her either and she continued to experience challenging times.

Catrina cites education was the key component to opening doors of opportunity, even when she became a young mum of two children she continued to gain qualifications. The time invested in education enabled her to build a career in sport development. She continued to progress and had the privilege of managing community focused teams delivering projects that concentrated on reducing inequalities to physical health & wellbeing within Luton where she has lived for the last 30 yrs.

Catrina’s underlying belief is that everyone should have the opportunity to reach their full potential. She has always recognised particular groups of people are marginalised, face injustice and experience exponential challenges which inhibits their progression. This should not be the case but it is!”

Through her employment at Active Luton and voluntary work she has been able to follow her passion to support, assist, mentor and develop people from all communities, regardless of their circumstances and background. Catrina’s work has provided her with the opportunity to drive forward projects, make continuous improvements and most importantly challenge systems and processes.

One of Catrina’s favourite projects was the setting up and management of the National Award Winning ME TIME community based project funded by Sport England. This project was set up to address the high levels of inactivity amongst women from Luton’s diverse communities.

My name is Jess King and I was born and raised in Liverpool. I spent 10 years playing for Liverpool from age 8-18 before moving to Vancouver for university on a football scholarship. I then came back and played for Everton, ISC Gunners (Seattle), FC Basel (Switzerland), USV Jena (Germany), Kolbotn (Norway) before moving back to England and have been at Lewes since January 2019. I feel very fortunate to have experienced everything that I have and moving to Canada changed my life as it totally expanded my horizons and adjusted my mindset. 

I am excited to get involved with Kickoff@3 because they embody the things that I value. I truly believe that it is important to give back and help pave the way for younger generations. I want to help encourage young people on their football journey, whatever the level, and I know that KickOff@3 fosters that environment. I also want to be a part of an organisation that encourages positive habits, self belief and helps young people to understand how ones actions can affect others. I want to see an increase in numbers of female coaches within in the game, at all levels, and see the increase in females from within the BAME community – from the WSL all the way down to grass roots. Therefore, being an ambassador for KickOff@3 encompasses all of these things. 

We are proud to officially announce Marcus Gayle as a KickOff@3 ambassador. He has been supporting us and our events for some time and has done us the honour of lending his name and vast experience to our work with young grassroots footballers.

Marcus began his professional career at Brentford on leaving school at 16, making over 230 appearances over 2 spells, divided by a period on loan. In 1994 he signed for Wimbledon 1994 for whom he appeared 285 times, of which 204 were in the Premier League. Marcus headed over the border to Glasgow Rangers in 2001 but only made 4 appearances before joining Watford, playing for the Hornets 115 times. He also received the accolade of representing Jamaica in the 1998 World Cup appearing  a total of 18 times. Marcus finished his playing career at AFC Wimbledon embarking upon a coaching role for the reserves over four seasons.

For the last 4 years he has worked with with “Kick It Out” delivering equality and diversity educational workshops all across the country to academy players, staff and parents. He is always available to mentor young people and support organisations like KickOff@3.

Since becoming our Ambassador, Marcus has been an enormous support to the young players at our tournaments, happy to engage, encourage and dispense both advice and awards. He has even donned the boots again for the KickOff@3 team in support of anti-knife crime charities. 

Trust us, he hasn’t lost the skills.

As a Detective Chief Superintendent for Bedfordshire Police, the most Senior Detective in the Force, Liz led a complex portfolio of volume, serious and major crime investigations and this was built upon many years of experience as a detective, putting victims and the vulnerable at the heart of everything she did whilst ensuring that offenders were brought to justice.  

 Liz drove lasting cultural change initiatives to improve performance, wellbeing, employee engagement and quality standards across the board whilst embedding the Code of Ethics, creating an award-winning approach to increasing employee engagement and raising performance levels.

Nationally, Liz has worked on unlocking the potential of under-represented groups in policing through delivery on the Aspire Programme at the College of Policing and is an advocate for equality.

Liz was born in Luton and always lived and worked in Bedfordshire, her love of sports came from her family, with her parents owning a Sports shop called Kick Off! Her Dad played Youth and reserve Team Football at Tottenham in the 1960s and supports both Spurs and Luton. Liz has never played football – tennis being the sport where she represented Bedfordshire in her teens.

Liz will say that her career has had many hi-lights where she has seen the very best of humanity and lows where sadly incidents have shown the very worst of society where it is a struggle to see how someone can cause so much pain and suffering to others especially those that they purport to love.

Policing was her life for 30 years and as Liz approaches retirement she will be taking time to consider her next steps but wishes to support young people, inspire them to achieve and just like the ethos of KickOff@3, show that #WeBelieve. With the career that Liz has had it is no surprise that she supports the work of Embrace – Child Victims of Crime (embracecvoc.org.uk) in their work to make a difference supporting children, young people and families who are victims of crime.

My name is Jess King and I was born and raised in Liverpool. I spent 10 years playing for Liverpool from age 8-18 before moving to Vancouver for university on a football scholarship. I then came back and played for Everton, ISC Gunners (Seattle), FC Basel (Switzerland), USV Jena (Germany), Kolbotn (Norway) before moving back to England and have been at Lewes since January 2019. I feel very fortunate to have experienced everything that I have and moving to Canada changed my life as it totally expanded my horizons and adjusted my mindset. 

I am excited to get involved with Kickoff@3 because they embody the things that I value. I truly believe that it is important to give back and help pave the way for younger generations. I want to help encourage young people on their football journey, whatever the level, and I know that KickOff@3 fosters that environment. I also want to be a part of an organisation that encourages positive habits, self belief and helps young people to understand how ones actions can affect others. I want to see an increase in numbers of female coaches within in the game, at all levels, and see the increase in females from within the BAME community – from the WSL all the way down to grass roots. Therefore, being an ambassador for KickOff@3 encompasses all of these things.