NewsAcademy column: End-of-season awards special

It has been another year in which we have progressed our U18 education programme, which has included tailored learning opportunities in and out of the classroom. It has seen our players develop holistically as well as gaining vital qualifications to enhance opportunities as their careers progress.

One of our U21s players, goalkeeper Oscar Kelly, took part in a Level 3 leadership qualification. It was a 14-month programme through the apprenticeship levy and he finished that early this year. He got a distinction and we are really proud of him.

He finished it with Heidi Luck, our staff member, and Liverpool FC Women player Carla Humphrey. That shows the combination of learning through different disciplines worked well.

We’ve also had success on additional qualifications this year. Our second years got a Level 1 award in mental health, we’ve done our nutrition qualifications again, we’ve done coaching level two, which was supported by the PFA and Neil Bailey. Neil does a fantastic job and we are proud to have him on board with us. He works tirelessly to ensure the coaching is completed.

We also had James McConnell, Iwan Roberts and Reece Trueman who completed their self-elected UEFA B qualification as well, so it shows the partnership we have between ourselves, the PFA and Neil is working well.

This year we also had two boys who completed their A-Level Spanish and two boys, Isaac Mabaya and Niall Osborne, completing their A-Level Business, so we wish them well in their upcoming exams. Good luck to all our players completing their exams in the coming weeks, we are all behind you.

We had a special awards day at the Academy last week in our annual awards presentation, which finished with a celebration barbeque at the AXA Training Centre.

Our scholar of the year, who has also been put forward for the Premier League award, is our U18s goalkeeper Luke Hewitson.

He was selected for this prestigious award as he is a player who has gone above and beyond the standard educational provision for U18 players. Besides doing the BTEC and the SEP programme he is also doing an A-Level in Spanish and it is because of his commitment to education, as well as football, he has got our scholar of the year.

Further awards included: Iwan Roberts winning the award for effort and application; Kerron Samuels was voted chef of the year by Academy nutritionist Tom Maynard; while Niall Osborne and Nathan Morana were voted players’ players of the year within education.

Recently, one of our U9 players, Elliot, took part in a Premier League writing competition. We are proud of Elliot and he has shown great courage and enthusiasm. It was really pleasing for us as an academy to see that he took this opportunity to complete the literacy challenge.

Elliot wrote a piece about a boy being bullied at school and having the courage to stand up for yourself and be counted. We are really proud of his story and it just shows you that talent is not just on the pitch, it’s off it as well, and that is so important for these boys and for us. We celebrated Elliot’s success and it’s something that we encourage all of our players to do.

We’ve also had success and something to be celebrated around our boys around the life skills and personal development programme. We had boys who completed different aspects, including our city, our club, racism and inclusion. The six strands of our scholar life skills and personal development programme are: community and society; acceptance and understanding; professional preparation; career and self-development; mental health and wellbeing; and public image.

In summary, it has been another really productive year in education, we are really pleased with our outcomes and we want to wish all of our boys taking part in any exams in the coming weeks the best of luck.

YNWA.

Caitlin Hawkins was speaking with Liverpoolfc.com's Steve Hunter.