Glamorgan Cricket recently appointed Aimee Rees as its Head of Women & Girls Cricket.
A stalwart of Welsh Cricket, Aimee has been largely responsible for the incredibly strong reputation that girl’s cricket in Wales has enjoyed.
A former player for Wales Women, she has now transitioned into her new role, alongside her Assistant Coaching duties with Welsh Fire.
The Club’s media team caught up with Aimee to discuss her role and her ambitions for the women’s game in Wales.
You recently started your new role here at Glamorgan, can you tell us a little bit about what that entails?
I have recently become Head of Women and Girls Cricket at Glamorgan and look after the Wales Girls Pathway as well, so that includes all performance cricket across Wales currently.
I am absolutely loving it. I never thought that I would have the opportunity to work in cricket full-time. It is a really exciting opportunity for me, and hopefully, everyone in Wales will see the benefit in the women’s game.
What are you hoping to achieve in the role?
I want to make cricket as accessible for girls as possible and for the girls to have the possibility to be the best that they can be. I think that it is really important now that they have got role models and that they can actually make a career out of playing cricket.
We can give girls the opportunity to play for Welsh Fire and at Sophia Garden, and then gain further honours by playing for England and Wales. Our Pathways will contribute towards that.
You mentioned Welsh Fire, you have also been appointed Assistant Coach there, how did that come about? And how are you enjoying the experience?
I applied for the job as Assistant Coach in the first year of The Hundred but I was actually offered the analyst role, which I did for the first edition of the competition.
Luckily, I was asked to be the Assistant Coach for Welsh Fire last season, and I have loved every minute of it and am looking forward to carrying it on this summer. It is so good to see that women’s professional cricket is there now.
The best players in the world are playing in Cardiff, in the UK, and The Hundred has really put Women’s cricket on the map.
Cricket has made some great strides in improving the platform for women in the sport. How important is it to keep the momentum going in that regard?
It is hugely important, there has been a huge investment from the ECB into women's and girl’s cricket, and that is just the start really. We are seeing more and more girls turn professional and I am sure that we will eventually get to the point where there are 15 professional cricketers in each region.
We are hoping that we can get more and more Welsh players into the professional game as well.
How exciting is the future for women’s cricket in Wales?
We are so excited for the future. We have some really talented youngsters, and we are seeing the older players get regional contracts.
We have got Sophia Smale at the U19 World Cup at the moment, which is amazing news, and she has been so successful already. I’m hoping that her and the squad do really well in that!
It shows girls that there are real opportunities for them in cricket as a career path now.
Is it realistic to think we will see more Welsh representation in the England and Wales team moving forward?
I hope so, I think we are going to see more and more in the future, and I think we are going to be very lucky and have a number of faces in the squad. The girls are working so hard, and I am sure that they will reap the rewards for all that work.
Most importantly they have the platform now to go on and play at the higher levels.