A YOUNG Flintshire man is on a mission to help children regain their confidence.

Nathan Woodworth, 22, set up Galatico Sports a year ago - with a focus on providing high quality coaching and improving children's physical and mental health.

Nathan, of Connah's Quay, wants more local children to get up and active in an age where game consoles and televisions dominate a lot of children's time.

And Hawarden resident Emma Leighton has vouched for how her son, Sam, getting involved with Galactico Sports has helped his physical and particularly mental health "no end".

Sam has been attending football coaching sessions with Nathan at Gladstone playing fields in Hawarden - and Emma says it has helped Sam massively improve his confidence.

Nathan, who specialises in football coaching, said: "Fitness is my life and coaching is my passion and one of the major things about lockdown was how when the children were allowed to finally go out, parents told me how devastatingly unfit their children had become.

"One parent told me that their child had gone from being really sporty exercising 8 hours a week to nothing and being at home they were constantly eating and after many weeks of this lockdown had put on two stone and this had taken a real toll on his mental health.

"I was in a fortunate position where we could teach one-to-one coaching sessions to start getting this 9-year-old's fitness back to what it was and after 6 weeks of training they are now back to where they were beforehand playing for their local grassroots team."

He added: "This day and age its easy to sit down and watch TV on an iPad at home, so during the pandemic I set up some online fitness challenges and some interactive fun football fitness video workouts on our Facebook and Instagram page and we had fantastic take up.

"Our team get great satisfaction from our students succeeding and after many years of coaching I decided to set up Galactico Sports in October last year to focus on children’s health and wellbeing and we are seeing a huge difference in all our clients."

And to help more children in the local area Galatico Sports is running October Half Term Football camp at Gladstone Playing Fields in Hawarden after getting clearence from Flintshire Council to do so.

Nathan says he would also like to thank Hawarden Community Council for its ongoing support.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you can email info@galacticosports.co.uk or visit its website www.galacticosports.co.uk