17 Years of LLS

LLS celebrated its 17th birthday on the 15th of November.

Joe Mulhearn and Jordan Wright started LLS in 2008 at 19 and 20 years old, looking to pave their way in the sports coaching business. They had already been active in the community, working after school clubs and weekend sessions, when they decided they could start a business doing their own coaching events. There, they began Little League Sports.

When asked how it felt in those early days, Joe and Jordan both had the same answer. They were young, still in university, and felt they could improve upon what they’d seen in the coaching industry at the time.

Joe: “It was exciting. We enjoyed it. The first Saturday morning we had about 20, 30 children. We designed our own little posters that weren’t very good now you look back.”

Jordan: “It was exciting, to be honest, very exciting.”

In the Beginning

Regarding the LLS sixth form sports course, it was something that came about naturally. It was the result of speaking with coaches who had qualifications but very little experience. 

Joe: “[Creating the LLS sixth form sports course] was probably partly in our mind, but obviously we were only 19 and 20 really. But it was inevitable that we’d set up our own course. So we set up our own qualification for 16 year olds with a huge emphasis on work experience.”

Jordan: “I think the education side of things was where we always wanted to get to, but you couldn’t just start doing that when you were 21 or 22, you had to first gain trust in the community. So lo and behold, we were working with the primary schools for two or three years before we had an opportunity to go back to our old school, Gateacre Comprehensive. Gateacre School, as it’s now known, was the proving ground for LLS. Here, Joe and Jordan piloted the LLS sixth form course and showed it could be as successful as it is today.”

Guerilla Marketing

Gaining the trust of the community was one aspect, but another was spreading the word of LLS throughout the city of Liverpool.

Their initial campaign involved homemade posters that were put up around the city, along with an old Royal Mail van that was plastered with the original ‘Little League Sports’ logo which was parked strategically all over Liverpool.

However, it was a world-record breaking charity football match that made headlines across the city.

The charity five-a-side match in 2011 helped to set LLS apart and spread the word about Joe and Jordan’s good work. The match raised £31,000 for the charity Cash for Kids, and was an exhausting affair that lasted 41 hours. There were 16 players which meant everyone took a 30 minute break after 4 hours of playing, so there was barely any time for rest.

One of the event ambassadors was famed Liverpudlian Jimmy McGovern, an award winning writer originally known for his work on the series Brookside and other acclaimed series such as Hillsborough, about the 1984 Hillsborough Disaster that claimed the lives of 97 Liverpool fans. More recently, he created the BAFTA winning BBC One drama Time, starring Sean Bean and Stephen Graham.

Another spectator was current Arsenal FC manager, Mikel Arteta. It was the summer of 2011, and Arteta had just finished his final season with Everton FC before leaving for Arsenal.

Concurrently, there was another group in Newcastle-upon-Tyne who were attempting to break the same record. Originally, the world record for longest five-a-side match stood at 35 hours, and the team on the east coast tapped out at 40.

In 2011, the Liverpool Echo quoted Joe: “This will help us to raise funds to put on free sporting events for schools. The aim is to reach £30,000.”

“The competition to beat that figure added value to the publicity of what we were trying to do. It’s an amazing achievement to break the world record – I just hope ours lasts longer than the day which Newcastle held theirs.”

The funds raised went towards allowing underprivileged children to attend sports camps that summer.

Trips to Uganda

The five-a-side match raised enough eyebrows that the pair were approached by another charity to make a trip to Uganda to raise funds and make donations to school children in Kampala, Uganda’s capital city.

Joe: “We were approached by a charity to go and obviously deliver programmes to children in a school in Kampala, so you were coaching about 100 kids at once.”

Jordan: “
Then we got the opportunity to go to Uganda, so that was unbelievable, an eye-opening experience for us. We did a city wide kit collection with drop off points all around the city and people were amazing donating boots and kits for the children.”

They made the trip to Kampala on two separate occasions in 2010 and 2011.

LFC Foundation

The next big milestone for LLS was when they were approached by Liverpool Football Club’s LFC Foundation to operate their Skills & Drills programme in primary schools across Liverpool.

Jordan: “Liverpool Football Club launched their Foundation, and we were in that many primary schools that they actually came to us and said it’d be brilliant if we could work in partnership together.”

Alongside working with the LFC Foundation, the sixth form course continued to develop. LLS centres grew beyond the Northwest, initially into Northern Ireland and Yorkshire, before continuing to grow across England and Wales.

LLS Worldwide

When it comes to the sixth form sports course, coaching experience is a huge priority. It’s the basis on which Joe and Jordan started their qualification course. That’s why it’s essential for LLS to offer students coaching opportunities they won’t find anywhere else.

One of these opportunities is the chance for LLS students to go to Kisakallio in Finland. The Finland connection came about through Woolton High School which neighbours LLS HQ. Woolton High is twinned with a school near Kisakallio in Finland, and Mark Christian, headteacher of Woolton High, introduced Joe and Jordan to senior staff at the Finnish school and provided the opportunity for LLS students to make use of their fantastic facilities.

Jordan: “It’s an amazing Alpine forest setting with multi-sports facilities, that were absolutely top drawer. An amazing gymnastics facility, indoor ice hockey, indoor basketball, a big 4G football facility, and we were able to go over and deliver camps out there initially to local Finnish children. That soon turned into us being able to send our young people to go and coach Finnish children themselves, and it’s just been an awesome experience. On some of the recent trips as well, they were able to go over to Tallinn in Estonia, to coach in some schools there and see the city.”

Finland and Estonia are just a couple of the places that LLS students have the opportunity to go, another being Alicante, on the east coast of Spain.

Jordan: “With regards to Alicante, Michael McDonough, who was working initially on Your Tour, moved over to Spain during the pandemic and we developed a really good programme to send students from LLS course over to gain valuable experience coaching in Spanish schools.”

Looking Back Now

I asked Joe and Jordan what sticks out in their mind as some of their best memories since starting LLS, and they both had the same answer:

Joe: 
”For me it’s seeing the students develop, and their progression after they leave. Meeting them when they’re in Year 11 or 12 and then watching them graduate from LLS to go on and coach in all different parts of the world.”

Jordan: “
I was at a convention in America and I met up with Paige Forster, who was on the very first sixth form programme that we ever did. She worked with us for a few years, and then went to the states one summer and got a job working over there. She’s now got her own house and is married to her partner in America. She’s the director of coaching at a club just outside of Boston, and I think to myself memories like that are brilliant. Our alumni are so important.

We’ve got some brilliant students who are now working abroad. The likes of Daniel Shields who’s working hard in Bahrain, Millie from Archbishop Beck and Dan Barlow who are holding brilliant jobs in Dubai, Nadine who’s doing amazing work for Challenger sports. Jordan Hadaway who went away with Challenger, got a degree and is now back working with LLS, or Blaine who now works with us on Your Tour.”

LLS’ journey over the last 17 years has been incredible to behold, starting from afterschool clubs in primary schools, to providing incredible coaching opportunities for young adults across England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It’s difficult to imagine what Joe and Jordan might have imagined for themselves in 2008 17 years down the line, but it’s not hard to see that what they’ve built is something they can look back on and be proud of.