Day 12

Day 12.

Hi guys, hope the pictures covered what I did this Morning!

Carrying on from where I left off.. We headed back to Ruyterwacht and prepared for the open day that the leaning centre were holding! We collected some crates of juices which the local supermarket 'sentra' had donated for the day! We also prepared the hall for the little action soccer tournament we were holding. Action soccer is pretty much small sided indoor football, about 4 a side. Around 40-50 kids turnt up and we spoke to them all about what we're planning to do in partnership with Communicare and that they would be seeing our ugly faces a lot over the next 3 months! But the main motivation behind our talk was to stress the fact that they should always go to school, try not to get dragged into bunking and doing drugs and just generally going off the rails down a rocky road. The learning centre allow children to come in after school and use the computer room for research, homework and generic studying for FREE which is a really good incentive and the kids should make the most out of it. Jeff and I stressed that the kids should feel lucky to have such a fantastic company and centre full of such helpful people like Joe and Lourens.. Only a matter of minutes away from where they live!! We tried not to make the talk a lecture but to just try and motivate them to chase their dreams if they have any! Dropping out of school to play Xbox will not help them reach their goals and dreams. The action soccer tournament was fun and I used my expert referee knowledge to officiate it all. At the end we stopped for a few photos but it was now time to head somewhere else! Time was pushed.

Afterwards it was time to take a drive the Italian, Atlantic soccer club in Brooklyn! Who have a pretty high standard of football and are just one division behind the premier league in South Africa. Jeff and I took a mixture of their under 15's,16's and 17's and had about 28-30 kids EACH in two seperate groups.. which you would think would be a challenge... Unfortunately you would be wrong! I enjoyed myself immensely and the boys were so polite, well mannered and most of all..always listening! They were very disciplined it seemed and answered to me with 'yes coach' 'no coach' 'thanks coach' which was a real nice touch.

 As Jeff and I didn't get to perform our awareness session to a big extent yesterday we decided to do it to the kids today! We had an hour and fifteen minutes of coaching from 5:45-7:00! They loved the session and it was a change from doing a lot of physical work such as running, endurance training and general high intensity drills. I did a lot of game based exercises and did a little round robin tournament of handball seeing as I had 4 teams of 7 (one with 8). They understood the importance of communication, pass and move but also the fact that you always have to be aware on a football pitch! After they understood these important facts.. It was time to let their feet do the talking! They were still in their teams and we did an end zone based passing session all based around my session objective which was passing,awareness and communication! I changed the restrictions a lot so that they could get a feel for all types of plays and environments they may face on a pitch! For example, 3 touches, 5 passes before you can pass it into the end zone, the pass into the end zone has to be a first time, one touch pass and much much more! They loved the session and were so grateful. A lovely bunch of boys! Can't wait to be back!

We headed back to the clubhouse for a couple beers and some pizza with all the coaches and discussed our sessions, football in general and we also talked about the soccer school we will be running later on in our time in Cape Town!

Time to head home! We arrived home at about 8:15, ate our dinner, showered and headed downstairs for some wifi time! I don't know about jeff but I am soooooo tired!

Speak to you guys tomorrow.
All the best,

Luke