Some of the girls after they got their cleats in the morning session
Two of the men with their certificates
A poor quality picture of the coaches after the clinic...it was dark by the time they finished asking questions and got all the equipment
Twelve field sessions and five coaching sessions later, the week's activities are coming to a close. We'll finish off the festivities tomorrow morning with our third weekly open clinic. I've completely neglected the blog as a result of all the craziness around here, but I'll try to recap as best I can:
1) Girl's Camp, morning and afternoon sessions- A large majority of the girls we worked with this week came from the school phys-ed classes we visited. It was great to have consistent access to them, as personalities emerged throughout the week and soccer skills definitely improved. The morning group was consistently smaller and mostly from the same school, so they were the first group to invent their own chants, make demands for certain drills, and learn to make fun of Molly. The afternoon group was bigger, but included a number of favorites including Patricia..a ten year old beanpole with more athletic ability in her tiny pinky than I have in my whole body. During tiger tails, Patricia leap-frogged over Molly as if she weren't 3 feet tall hurdling over a fully grown adult. We were able to hand out more than 50 pairs of cleats; each girl who attended the camp received a pair the second day they attended. The tiny store next to the field didn't know what hit them...they were sold out of water by the second day, mostly because of the gringa coaches who clearly hadn't gotten themselves in camp shape ahead of time. By the end of the week our collection of bystanders had grown out of control...the girls had a fenceful of boys watching them during every session. Our entourage (Carlos, Noel, and Chepe) did a great job of keeping the boys out of our ball bags, but every now and then one of them would get a hold of a ball and launch it directly into our faces. I'm beginning to think it's in the male DNA here.
Coaches Clinic- With the addition of Ann (Penn State Coach), April (Colorado College Coach) and Dani (Former Lehigh player and native Colombian) we were able to put together a truly unique coaches clinic. All of the coaches from the first day continued the course, and today at the closing we had 15 coaches earn a certificate and a coaching kit with balls, cones, pinnies, and a whistle. They've each been collecting training ideas throughout the week, and each of the sessions we designed utilized the same amount of equipment as they would find in their coaching kits. Credit to Ann for suggesting that neutral players could carry cones to distinguish themselves from the other two teams, since each of the coaching kits contained just one pinnie color. Nearly every team from the men's league was represented, and a few expressed a willingness to work with or help organize future opportunities for girls. Apart from the actual nitty gritty, the highlight of the clinic was on day 4 when, as we began to set up cones, the coaches began to run warm-up laps around the field...completely of their own accord. There's nothing like a couple of warmup laps to really get the brain going.
Girls' practices- Tuesday we had our Nicaragua vs. the World game and I have to admit, we showed no mercy. We had to borrow a keeper from the girls in order to play 11 v 11, and just after halftime we turned around to see our keeper casually gnawing on a mango as we handed her teammates a 5-0 loss in about 30 minutes of gametime. While feeding our own egos is not normally the protocol, we've resorted to drastic measures to get the girls attention in hopes that we can inspire them to work a little harder in training sessions...perhaps even show up less than 30 minutes late. Our experience with the team has been very inconsistent; at times they seem so engaged and wanting to get better, at other times they just seem to enjoy wearing matching red shirts. We're hoping that the enthusiasm of the handful who really are committed will spread to the rest.
All in all, we kept the food-in-a-bag and juice-in-a-bag people in business with our constant state of hunger and incessant dehydration. We also drove our host mom crazy by pumping up 40 balls in the middle of the night...by the light of Ann's headlamp. It's been a really long week but I really couldn't have imagined it any other way. Major thank yous to everyone who donated the equipment we distributed, or contributed to the camp/coaches clinic in other ways. It was a major success for the project and we hope it will stand as the first annual Soccer Without Borders Spring Break Camp in Nicaragua! If anyone can think of a more clever name than that, let me know...
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