U15s Academy & Development

The School Games are an incredible opportunity for young athletes to experience a national level multi sport event, akin to a ‘mini’ Commonwealth Games.

The School Games ethos is to put physical activity and sport at the heart of the community, and to provide young people with the opportunity to learn, thrive and enjoy sport through competition to achieve their personal best. The event is funded by Sport England, and delivered by the Youth Sport Trust.

The event started in 2006 with a single multi sport competition – what is now known as the School Games National Finals. In 2010, the School Games was expanded to include early rounds of more localised competition, from major county events to more local and in-school competitions. As part of this work, the YST were funded by Sport England to work with the national governing bodies of various sports to assist in the creation of a series of sports formats which will guide the future of sport competitions. Over the years, the list of NGB’s involved with the School Games has now expanded to over 45 events, with everything from Wheelchair Basketball to American Football events taking place nationwide.

Since 2010, the School Games programme has offered 13.4 million participation opportunities for young people. Netball is one of the core sports, having been part of the School Games since it’s inception. This four day, bi-annual multi sport event is returning in September for it’s 17th year at Loughborough University from 3rd-6th September 2026.

Previous athletes who have attended the School Games have gone on to secure 100 Commonwealth Games medals at the 2022 Birmingham Games, 29 Olympic Medals and 36 Paralympic Medals at the last Games.

Every EN Netball franchise has the opportunity to select a team of talented young players to attend the School Games 2026.

To be considered for selection at London Mavericks, athletes must fulfil one or more of the following criteria:

• You must be available for regular training between the end of April and the beginning of September 2026, with no significant breaks in your availability.
  • Be able to miss school over the competition dates (if your summer holidays have finished) to attend this event.
• Be born after 1 Sept 2010 (currently school year 10)
  • Be in an England Netball Pathway programme:
    •               U17 or U19 London Mavericks NPL Academy programme
      •               London Mavericks PDP programme

London Mavericks affiliate County U15 PDP programme – London Mavericks Counties are:

Bedfordshire

Cambridgeshire

East Essex

Essex Thurrock

Hertfordshire

Middlesex

Norfolk

Suffolk

Selection will take place at our trials in April, but we have already been working with our County Coaches to get to know you.

Your County / PDP / Academy coach, with whom you have been working with this season, will be speaking to us about you regularly, and are already highlighting talent in their Pathway.

We are holding London Mavericks County and PDP play days, where we want to see you on court, and start to get to know you as a player, and we continue to review the players in our London Mavericks Academy programmes.

We are holding a workshop for selected County Athletes, where we will be looking for those County athletes with great talent, and who can take on coaching, and show potential to join this programme.

We will then hold our U15 Academy trials on Saturday 18th April 2026. This is the only date we will be able to trial athletes, so anyone wishing to be considered MUST attend. Booking into these trials is open NOW.

London Mavericks pride ourselves on having a fair and open trial process.

We know that for some of the girls trialling, this will be their first experience of a franchise or big trial, and they may be nervous – but actually, we just want players to enjoy themselves and relax!  We will make sure that girls play their first and second positions, and get to play with different people – so if they have a bad game, they can shake it off, and go again.  We will include a combination of some technical skills work and match play, and hope that we give them an environment that they can shine in!

Our trials will be attended by experienced Coaches and Selectors from across the London Mavericks programme.  We will have lots of people at the trials, who all independently will score and assess the athletes, giving us a really broad picture of the skills, level and capability of the players on court.

After the trial, we know you will be keen to get an outcome, and we will be working hard to let you know the next steps.

Athletes may be offered a place in either our Academy or Development Group – these groups will train side by side for all of Phase 1, and we expect the allocation and movement between the groups to be quite fluid – some players will thrive and step up, others may need a bit more support and coaching.  By having both groups run in parallel with each other, we can see talent emerge and should positional gaps arise in the Academy group at a later stage, we have a talented pool of players to draw from.

Our U15 programme will work in 4 clear phases between April and September. The days of training are not yet confirmed.

Phase 1 :          Athletes selected at trials will be split into an Academy & a Development group, who will train alongside each other, attending training every 2 weeks from the end of April to early June. At these sessions, we can get to know you better, work on key skills and playing fundamentals, and move players between the two groups depending on their ability in these sessions.  At the end of Phase 1, some athletes will be re grouped, and some will be de-selected.

Phase 2 :          We will continue to work with the smaller group of athletes in our Academy and Development Squads, training weekly together to build skills and connections through June and into mid July.  There will still be opportunity to move between the two groups.  At the end of Phase 2, we will select a long squad of athletes.

Phase 3 :          Our long squad will train together up to the School Games weekend, and our Development Squad will continue to train and support the group. These sessions will become more technical, so all athletes, even those who are not in the final squad will benefit and develop from the training, which will take place twice a week through August.

Phase 4 :          School Games weekend.

To ensure that our programme is as fair and cost effective as possible, we only charge each athlete for the Phases of the programme that they attend.

Athletes who wish to considered for this programme should not be unavailable for more than 2 weeks during the whole programme, and may not miss any training sessions after 10th August.

We appreciate that this does impact your family holiday plans, which is why we flag this really early. There is a break in training from 24^th July – 5^th Aug, and we strongly encourage holidays to be taken in this break.  The continuity of training, and commitment demonstrated by athletes who fully commit to the programme is key to success, and enables our coaching team to work cohesively with the group together.

Athletes can only be considered for the London Mavericks programme who attend either a London Mavericks Academy or PDP programme, or who attend a London Mavericks affiliated County Programme.

England Netball will individually need to approve any request from an athlete who feels that they may have a reason to apply to another franchise.  These reasons may include :

• Another franchise’s U15 Academy is significantly closer than your affiliated County’s U15 Programme.
• You attend boarding school, and train with one franchise / county, but your home address is significantly further away than your school to the U15 training venue
• Other extenuating reasons.

If you think your application will need to be approved, please contact us before applying to trial.