Fleetwood Town duo Harrison Holgate and Ben Whelan paid a visit to local primary school St. Wulstan's to discuss resilience and helping the pupils with their transition to high school.
Thursday afternoon saw two Town players head out into the community as part of the Community Trust’s Headstart campaign, which aims to deliver 1-2-1 support and class workshops to Year 6 and Year 7 children across Fleetwood to provide an early intervention and prevention service surrounding mental health.
The aim being to focus on their transition to secondary school to ensure they have an awareness of self-management and coping strategies as they experience this new change in their lives.
Accompanied by the Trust’s Mental Health Transformation Officer Rachel Walker, the players made their way to the school in Fleetwood and answered questions on how they’ve worked through tough periods in their lives and their careers.
Holgate talked about his time at Manchester United as a young player, whilst Whelan opened up about his time playing grassroots football and making that step into the professional world.
Pupils asked questions, with one boy asking a question around managing anger on the pitch as he gets frustrated when playing football at school, and Harrison gave some great advice about channelling the anger into the game, using it to run faster and motivate him throughout the game.
The two players both talked about the importance of having hobbies outside of football, including using their support networks to have someone to speak to when they are struggling, they may get advice they hadn’t have thought of.
There was some time for some fun question, including asking the duos their celebrity crushes and if they play Fortnite in their spare time - which the children were buzzing about with their answers to these!
Overall, the whole session was fantastic from start to finish, with the important messages coming out, with their resilience when dealing with tough times in their footballing careers and in day-to-day life.