The England Lacrosse girls’ summer camp programme for 2020 finished last week, with over 450 girls attending some 22 day camps across four weeks throughout July and August.

In mid June, we announced that we’d been working since the prevalence of the coronavirus outbreak to plan a summer camp programme which could be delivered with the Government COVID-19 restrictions.

We decided that, with social distancing restrictions in place and in order to maintain a fun and engaging curriculum, camps would run on a 2-day programme schedule with no form of residential camp.

We gained approval to follow the Department for Education’s (DfE) guidelines that detail protective measures for out-of-school holiday camps and ensured all protocols were in place to keep our girls and coaches as safe as possible.

Upon arrival, girls were directed to our dedicated summer camps team who checked and noted everyone’s temperature.

As per the Government guidelines, the camps operated a ‘pod’ system with campers being allocated a ‘pod’ based on age, ability and friendship requests.

Campers remained in these ‘pods’ in their allocated pitch space for the two days and were overseen by their own pod-specific coach.

Time spent doing activities inside was kept to a minimum to further reduce the risk of possibly transmitting the virus.

One camp host, Charterhouse School, said they were delighted with the way the summer camps went ahead this year.

“Despite the inevitable concerns arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, we were very impressed with the comprehensive measures put in place and the professionalism displayed by the team on the ground delivering the course.

“There were plenty of coaches on hand to welcome the players and explain to them exactly what was expected of them from a social distancing and hygiene perspective, and as ever, the overall organisation was smooth and professional”.

England Lacrosse are extremely pleased that so many girls were able to get back onto the lacrosse field after such a long time away and delighted the guidelines in place were adhered to and kept everyone safe while at the camps!