Falcons Jr Sports Club (FJSC) of NJ Expands Youth Cricket Development Program with ACF Coaching camp

The Falcons Jr (aka Junior’s) Sports Club (FJSC) of Edison, New Jersey recently hosted a weekend-long American Cricket Federation (ACF) Level 2 cricket coaching certification with youth cricket coaching sessions attended by many prospective coaches and team of youth players.

While the interest for conducting Youth Cricket Development Programs and grassroots level Youth Cricket Programs at local area schools in the Edison and surrounding area in the state of New Jersey is very high, this is being hampered by the lack of adequate certified cricket coaches. Expanding the number of coaches with sufficient coaching knowledge is a vital part of FJSC's mission to promote cricket in New Jersey and overall in the USA.

Falcons Jr Sports Club, a registered not-for-profit entity in NJ is a family of passionate cricket lovers who have come together to inspire the youth (a.k.a. the Juniors), to discover the wonderful and popular world sport – Cricket!

The journey began for the Falcons Jr Sports Club (FJSC) in 2016 when the founders Parag Khairnar and Anup Nair decided to start a cricket training camp for interested kids in the neighbourhood. They were joined by Prasath Rao in 2017 and Vijay DY who himself was running a similar camp in South Edison, the same year. They became the trustees of the non-profit entity – Falcons Jr Sports Club.

The kids who began playing with tennis ball in 2016, successfully transitioned into playing leather ball cricket and just completed their first tournament competing in the East Coast Youth Cricket League (EYCL) and ending in the Top 4 among the 10 U14 teams. We now have a professional coach on board besides close to 15 volunteer coaches, most of whom became a Level 2 Coach as part the ACF camp this weekend.

FJSC is the forefront of promoting Youth Cricket in the township of Edison since April 2016, a journey that began with 10 kids, have grown to a strength of 100+ kids, all in the age groups of 7-14. FJSC has a progressive and inclusive model that yearns to identify, nurture, build and promote potential talents from local communities to regional and national stage with belief system rests on two main pillars – Low Cost Model and High-Quality Training With the help of many volunteer coaches and a huge pool of parent volunteers helping us with the various aspects of the club.

As part of promoting the sport, FJSC recently conducted the second edition of the Falcons Jr Premier League (FJPL) 2018, a tennis ball youth cricket tournament that had 19 teams participating from all over New Jersey all in the age group of 7-14 years. This event was on the back of the hugely successful first edition in 2017.

The FJPL 2018 had close to 300 kids who participated, witnessed by close to 1000 individuals, ran across three weekends and was blessed by the Township of Edison and supported by a good number of sponsors. This event has become a cornerstone for the club and is a highly anticipated event for cricket lovers in the state of New Jersey.

Falcons Jr Cricket Club is an integral part of Falcons Jr Sports Club (FJSC).

The FJSC training camps runs throughout the year. At this time the Summer camp is being conducted at two locations in Edison, NJ. They have an open registration for this summer for the four levels – Level Beginner, Level One (Both Tennis Ball), Level One Advanced and Level Two (Both Leather Ball). The Winter Camp registration will begin the second half of September.

The recent coaching clinics were administered by ACF’s Director of Coaching Jatin Patel and helped prepare 14 of our own coaches for the Level 2 certifications. This is the major milestone towards providing an adequate number of trained coaches to help develop youth cricketers in the New Jersey. With this FJSC is now one of the largest Program in the New Jersey in terms of number of registered member players & in-house resident coaches which will help us to provide sustainable youth program for many years to come.

ACF Director of Coaching Jatin Patel said, “My vision is to educate America and train cricket coaches, so they can train many youths for many years to come. It is an effective outcome of the ACF cricket coaching program, and it’s great to see FJSC parent(s) team up for youth cricket development, and with this camp, new coaches are excited to launch an “in school” and “after school” youth cricket program to expand their program. A lack of adequate cricket coaches in the club was holding up such a project.”

Camp concluded with the ceremonial event with speeches from Avinash Gaje, Newly elected USA Cricket Individual board Director and Founder / President of New Jersey Softball Cricket League (NJSBCL) & Srujal Parikh, President Federation of Indian association (FIA) & founder of National School of cricket. After guest speeches, Jatin Patel with Guests honored new batch of coaches with certification rewards.

About the American Cricket Federation Cricket (ACF) Coach Certification Program

The ACF Cricket Coach Certification Level 1 program was launched in May 2014, followed by the Level 2 certification program one year later in June 2015. Since the launch, 24 States can now boast of having certified ACF cricket coaches.

Atlantis Cricket Club and Queens United Cricket Academy in New York, NJSBCL in New Jersey, United Cricket League in Boston, MA, Minnesota Cricket Association Youth Program in Minneapolis, American Cricket Academy and Missouri Youth Cricket Association in St. Louis. Sarasota International Cricket Club (SICC) Sarasota, FL. Colorado Cricket League in Denver, Washington Cricket Center in Washington DC, Florida Cricket Conference in Orlando, FL, Pittsburgh Cricket Association, PA, Southern California Youth Cricket Academy, Los Angeles and Southern California Junior Cricket, Los Angeles are a few of the hosts for ACF coaching camps/training sessions held since the ACF Cricket Coaching program was launched.

The following testimonials from Falcons Jr Sports Club's coaching staff are indicative of the success of the ACF clinic hosted by Falcons Junior Sports club.

*Simple but Superb!!*

Jatin Patel is a very knowledgeable coach, His simplified approach to a complex game says lot about his experience. We had a very engaging and thought provoking weekend with Jatin Patel. He was definitely the right man for the Job

- Krishna Natarajan

Enthralling! Engaging! Hands on! That’s how Jatin Patel runs his workshop! I have been coaching kids for the past 3 years, however ACF’s workshop and Jatin Patel’s many years of experience, demonstrated to me how much I can still learn and apply in making coaching a fun and learning experience! Thank you Jatin Patel!

- Anup Nair

Jatin Patel approaches the coaching from very practical aspect rather than religiously following the book of Cricket. His ideas to teach skills by creating the situations is new and very valuable. I am certainly more confident as a coach since his training and looking forward to associate more with him in the future.

- Murugan Manickam