LAKENHEATH Youth FC have won the Active Suffolk ‘Active Club Award’ for 2021.

They were named as winners on Wednesday afternoon in the third and final online ceremony organised by Active Suffolk on consecutive days.

In a short video club chair Richard Horrex said over the last 12 months Covid had thrown its fair share of problems at everybody.

As a club he said Lakenheath Youth had to adhere to new rules and changing rules and had also cope with leagues being cancelled because of restrictions placed upon them.

This meant the club had to go ‘above and beyond’ to provide football in different ways.

They had achieved this by increasing the number of training sessions offered, organising their own mini leagues and tournaments and also opening the club up to the community through their open training programme which they run each year.

He said this had a really successful impact with over 200 children attending and the numbers of  club members has grown to 180 across the club’s 11 teams from U6 to U16s. The award was sponsored by Abbeycroft Leisure.

Their success follows on from Lakenheath Youth FC being Highly Commended in the Grassroots Club of the Year category in The FA and McDonald’s Grassroots Football awards for 2021. The club were presented with their award at the Suffolk FA Awards Ceremony for 2020 & 2021 sponsored by McDonald’s & Jacobsen Ltd.

Clem Turner of Unity FC, winner of the Adult Coach of the Year Award in The FA and McDonald’s Grassroots Football awards for 2021, was shortlisted in the ‘Active Coach Award’.