On Tuesday 14th January, Derby County Community Trust hosted the local qualifying round of the Premier League Primary Stars National Girls Football Tournament at Derby Racecourse Hub. 

The Under-11 girls' tournament welcomed 20 primary school all-girl teams from across Derby City. 

Derby County Women's first team midfielders Paris Dalton and Helena Meadows were on-hand at the event to motivate and encourage teams throughout the latter stages of the event and even got stuck in with some training drills. Paris and Helena also shared their top tips to success and stories of their careers, to inspire the girls in attendance. 

Helena said "There wasn't a girls team in my primary school, not really in my secondary school either, it was more so just playing with grassroots boys. It was never all girls so I'm loving this, this is brilliant."

After a closely contested final Mickleover Primary School emerged 4-2 winners against last years champions, Oakwood Juniors to become local champions. Mickleover will now go on to represent Derby County Community Trust at the regional finals which will be hosted at Moor Farm Training Centre in March. 

Mickleover were presented with their winners trophy and certificates by Helena and Paris who then went on to have photos and sign certificates for players. 

On the importance of having female role models attend events like these, Paris said "As children, you hear about women's footballers and you aspire to be them but when you actually get to see them and meet them it puts a face to the name and you are further inspired"

Derby County Community Trust's PE and Schools Lead, Jack Southwart said "As a Trust we have been doing lots of work in primary schools, running female football competitions and after school clubs to engage new players who then feed into either our Wildcats sessions or our ETC programme"

The National Girls Football Tournament is one of the competition elements of the Premier League Primary Stars programme. Premier League Primary Stars is the Premier League's primary school education programme. Funded by the Premier League, through the Premier League Charitable Fund, the programme uses the appeal of football to help children to be active and develop essential life skills. 

The free programme also provides teachers and parents with access to more than 650 downloadable resources across a range of curriculum subjects at Key Stage 1 (age 5-7) and Key Stage 2 (age 7-11), developed by teachers, for teachers, and in collaboration with experts such as the National Literacy Trust. More than 70,000 teachers have signed up to access free online national curriculum-linked resources to date.

Congratulations to Mickleover Primary and well done to all the schools who took part on the day.