Boxing champ Lauren Price has gone back to her roots to see how National Lottery funding is being allocated to grassroots projects by Sport Wales to help more girls follow their dreams of sporting success.
To mark the National Lottery’s 30th birthday, Lauren visited Caerphilly Dragons – an all-female football club – as well as the VGA Gymnastics Club near Crumlin to hear how Lottery money is helping a StreetGames project improve young girls’ lives through sport.
When awarding Lottery funding, either directly to sports clubs or to organisations like StreetGames, Sport Wales prioritises its investments into tackling inequalities so that sport can have a bigger impact among the different types of people who are currently participating the least, such as girls.
As one of Wales’ most successful female athletes, Lauren acts as an inspiration to every young girl with sporting ambitions. Throughout her own sporting career, Lauren hasn’t just overcome many of the barriers which face women in sport, she has smashed them down.
Growing up, she was always told by her grandmother to reach for the moon and that if she fell short, she would land on the stars. At just eight-years-old, as part of a school project, she wrote that she wanted to become a kickboxing world champion, play international football for Wales and go to the Olympic Games.
By the time Lauren was 27, she had achieved all three of her goals – culminating with an Olympic gold medal in Tokyo – and has added more world titles since moving into professional boxing.
During her time as an amateur boxer, funding from The National Lottery fuelled her unstoppable desire to succeed.
“Thanks to the National Lottery, I was on a monthly wage so I could put everything into training three times a day and resting on weekends. ‘Early nights win fights’ became my motto.”
But Lauren’s sporting journey began in football, where she dreamed of emulating Thierry Henry. However, her early steps into the game in the mid 2000s were very different from those experienced by the majority of girls in Wales today. There were far fewer opportunities for girls to play football 20 years ago, as Lauren explains:
“I joined a team full of boys at Fleur-de-Lys where I was the only girl. It’s crazy to see how much has changed since then. Speaking to the coaches here today at Caerphilly Dragons, it was amazing to hear that they have more than 300 girls on their books, all enjoying a chance to play and have fun.”
A £2,500 Lottery grant was awarded to the Dragons by Sport Wales earlier this year so that more volunteers could complete Football Association of Wales (FAW) courses required to become coaches, enabling the club to expand.
But the growth of the women and girls’ game is being supported by so much more than grants to individual clubs. Thanks to players of the National Lottery, Sport Wales is able to invest in innovative national governing bodies, national partners and local authorities. This year alone, Sport Wales distributed £10,247,475 of National Lottery money to partners including the FAW.
Continued lottery funding into the female pathway and performance programmes, from girls’ academies through to the women’s national team has supported the FAW to quadruple the investment into all levels of the Women & Girls’ game over the past four years, as Cymru bid to qualify for their first major tournament – the UEFA Women’s Euros 2025.
Another valued Sport Wales partner is StreetGames, an organisation which works with local organisations in under-served communities to transform young lives through Doorstep Sport thanks to National Lottery funding.
Typically, research shows that girls from under-served communities have limited access to opportunities compared to their male counterparts and peers from wealthier backgrounds. As a result, their enthusiasm for sports and physical activity is often lower.
During her visit to the VGA Gymnastics Club, Lauren heard how volunteers from the club are teaming up with StreetGames to run the ‘Us Girls’ programme which aims to increase physical activity among young women and girls aged 13-19. Crucially, the teenage girls have their say on which activities they’d enjoy taking part in, and sessions are provided every Saturday.
Lauren said:
“I love how StreetGames are making it easier for more girls to take part in sport and are also giving them a voice.
“It’s really important for girls to get out of the house, be active and socialise with others.
“For me personally, when I got involved in sport as a kid my confidence grew. My schoolwork also improved. You make friends and come out of your comfort zone.”
Lauren is a big advocate of young people trying different sports:
“You never know what sports you’re going to enjoy at different points of your life, so it’s best to have a go at different ones and keep your options open. My football background has definitely helped my boxing.”
The National Lottery’s 30th birthday marks a significant milestone. During the last three decades, The National Lottery has invested over £356 million into Welsh sport, improving thousands of people’s lives by providing funding for community sport, high performance sport and through the fantastic work of Sport Wales’ partners.
