I am Gary Phillips and I have been known to waffle on a bit so please bear with me! I am here with advice on what and how to coach, whilst stealing some of your ideas at the same time. We are a sharing community.
Alison is the rock behind the scenes, making sure bills are paid, HMRC are happy and communications are prompt (she does not waffle). Between us we will have everything covered.
Socious Sports started back in 2004 with our first ever summer courses with coaches own over from New Zealand. It feels a long time ago now as the company has grown into the more complete business that it is today.
Gary developed the idea for the original business after his time coaching soccer in the United States. With the impending birth of our second child, we took the decision that we did not want to be weekend parents anymore and thought long and hard about what sort of business we wanted to build. Alison was working in nance and Gary was an IT project manager. Too many late nights were being spent at work and not enough time was being spent with our rst child, Ethan. The decision was made to quit the city and to develop a sports company.
We decided on rugby as the England team had just won the world cup (even though neither of us had much experience of rugby). We decided to start slowly, using the summer of 2004 as a pilot. A lot of lessons were learnt, but is was felt that a successful business was viable so we both quit our jobs (Gary had in May 2004 already) and we took the plunge. If we had known then what we know now.
The company quickly grew, with Socious Sports growing to be the largest provider of summer rugby camps probably in the world, then 2007/2008 hit and we had to reinvent ourselves. We no longer could just rely on the summers. It was also about this time that our 2 boys joined one of our local rugby and football clubs and Gary and Alison started to get exposed to minis playing side of rugby and football. This was a turning point, as Socious Sports then got to see exactly what was required by clubs, parents and children and our list of offerings started to grow and we became the business we are today.
We have learnt many things over the past 12 years. We have learnt how to run the business, how to promote effectively, how to grow and we have developed our services to reaect what the parents and children want and need. Socious Sports allows you to deliver a service to your customers that will see you with them throughout their player development, from their start to when they run out onto the eld as a young adult. We can enjoy that experience with smiles on ours and their faces.
We are now a year round business, working with schools, clubs and parents delivering a variety of coaching courses encompassing a variety of sports and games. We found ourselves working with children aged from 3 to 16, developing parents to be future coaches and helping club coaches get ready for the new season heading their way. We get to see children who start off with us aged 3 or 4 progress to become skilled players and well rounded con dent people.
Today we get to spend every holiday with our two boys, we get to coach over 400 children per week (at our busiest but not including the holidays). We get to enjoy the year as it changes from season to season and we get to meet other sports enthusiasts like us who love coaching children and seeing them develop. Our work life balance is the envy of our friends and where we think you would love to be.
