Chepe telling everyone not to laugh at me, Emily patiently acting as an easel
For everyone at home who donated cleats!
The cleats, right before madness ensued
Emily and Latisia facilitating the women in sports discussion
Happy International Women's Day! This morning we used the holiday as an excuse to make a sweet poster and give out muchas tacos (cleats). It was our second open girls clinic and we doubled our numbers, with almost 50 girls coming to join in the fun. About 7 of the older girls from the premier team also showed up to coach slash facilitate a discussion using their spanish skills on women in sports. To kick things off, I had prepared a short speech about the day, which Elise translated, our host sister edited, and Chepe prefaced with a "please don't laugh at her she doesn't speak Spanish." I'd like to think I only butchered a couple of the words but the blank stares from the audience suggested otherwise.
Anywho, the celebration was our first attempt to incorporate soccer with reflection, and we learned a lot from the experience. After an enormous game of freeze tag, we separated the girls into small groups by age and had each of the older girls (and some of us) facilitate a short discussion about why sports are important and what opportunities they have to play sports, and then asked them to name some athletes they look up to, including at least one female. 8 of the 9 groups couldn't name a single female athlete, not including the groups that wrote Mary, Molly, Emily, Elise, etc. They cited very few opportunities to play, although 3 of the groups described the Saturday clinic from last week. It was exciting to see the groups come together to think about their experience in sports, even though the relentless sun and an awareness of the 20 balls and 100 cleats sitting on the sidelines distracted a few of them.
After a short skills session and some scrimmages, we gathered everyone together to hand out the cleats. Many of the girls only have sandals and their leather school shoes, so some of them preferred to take sneakers in order to have a multi-purpose shoe. A word to the wise: distributing cleats in a public place is madness. We all left exhausted, confused, and sweating, some of us even bleeding. For the most part we think we were able to fit each girl with a pair of cleats, but some passers-by managed to sneak off with a pair or two smuggled in their muchilas (bags). Most of the girls said they would come to our camp next week, and advertising to others is our top priority for the next two days. Now that we've closed it off to boys, we need to do a better job of personally reaching out to girls. We've learned that with boys, rumors of a ball and a place to be are enough for hundreds of them to come running. Girls need a bit more coaxing, and ideally a personal relationship.
On another note, Friday's premier team scrimmage was canceled on account of the other team's bus broke down. After waiting around for an hour, we decided we had enough people to scrimmage against ourselves. Dehydration and utter exhaustion set in shortly thereafter. Emily, Molly, and I were all on the same team, and were quickly introduced to the 4-1-5 system. Basically you are either a defender (De-fen-sa: noun, one who plants themselves 20 yards from their own goal and swings blindly at anything within a one yard radius) or a forward (De-lan-tera: noun, one who plants themselves 20 yards from the other team's goal and swings wildly with the intention of scoring goals). I happened to be the sucker, ie the "1" in the middle. After attempting to run up and back in vain, I quickly changed tactics and started to launch balls in the direction of Yuerba, our star forward.
By the end of the game Yuerba had a hat trick and Em had two assists. They would not be enough, however, as Molly's hand ball in the box helped our opponents go ahead 4-3. Admittedly, I commited the foul that led to the free kick that led to Molly stopping the free kick with her hand in the box, HOWEVER, I barely touched the girl who was "fouled." As our Nicaraguan teammates turned against Molly, motioning for her to saw off her own hand, the other team planted another goal in the back of our net, making it 5-3. We'd recover one, but the game ended 5-4 and Molly humbly voted herself LVP (Least valuable player).
This is getting long so I'll sign off for now. Three girls from Colorado College joined us yesterday and we're looking forward to having some fresh perspective and ideas!
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