I am writing this blog whilst chilling on the sofa listening to Eminem's new album- The Marshall Mathers LP2 Deluxe Version. Which I bought before coming out to Cape Town, thanks to an ITunes voucher given to me by my Nan.
Today we were called by Danielle to tell us that Louren and herself had managed to get Jeff and I Eminem tickets at Cape Town stadium tomorrow!!!! Jeff and I are so excited, like two little kids. We're both two big Eminem fans and have masses of Eminem songs on our iPhone's and iPod's, so to be going to see him tomorrow whilst we're in Cape Town means that yet another memory will be made. Can't wait!!!! A HUGE THANKS TO DANIELLE AND LOUREN FOR SORTING THAT OUT, YOU'RE THE BEST.
Anyway, on to today's events!
We did our usual route to the station, we missed the 8:08 train however there is always a second one scheduled to make route to Vasco at 8:13 every day. We arrived at the station to realise the 8:13 was cancelled and that we would have to wait until 8:40 for the next one! Just our luck. After arriving 15 minutes late, we made our way to Bishop Lavis to coach at Riverton Creche. In today's session we thought we would use it as a tester for new exercises! Last night and on the train we came up with some pretty cool idea's. There's no way of finding out if something doesn't work, unless you try it! After speaking with Leo and James on Skype, it seemed like from a third person perspective that all we do is races and target practice. But let me assure you, we've never done the same thing with a creche. We just repeat the same sessions with a few differences to a selection of creches. However, to be honest, I took Leo's comment to heart a bit so it gave Jeff and I a motive to think of brand new stuff! We came up with four new exercises after about half an hour of planning time. I felt that when we did kicking and shooting sessions, the boys and girls weren't as buzzed and exciting in the session. I came to the conclusion that this was because we hadn't done any running or fun creative types of movement, instead we just went straight into kicking. I think i would find that quite hard to get excited too to be honest, thinking it about it now, especially at that age! In Bishop Lavis there is loads of planes to be seen in the sky! So I came up with the idea that we could do a little warm up called Aeroplanes and Bridges. The idea being that the boys and girls would run with their arms out, like aeroplanes, to the cone, around it and then back. Once they were back they could go under the bridge aka crawling through their team mates legs. We couldn't think of a way to make it soccer orientated but we were keen to use the Bishop Lavis surroundings to our advantage! To be fair it worked really well and some kids were too excited to be honest and lost their concentration but oh well, as long as their having fun!!
The second thing we did was the boys and girls would do an egg and spoon race, however the spoon would be the cone and the egg would be the cone. The kids would try to make the ball remain balanced on the cone. This worked to an average extent but like I said before it's something that we wanted to experiment with.
Our third part of the session was a exercise that I came up with where every person in the team was involved and it needed a high amount of teamwork. Every person would put two hands on the ball and the team would make a circle around it. As a team, they would have to shuffle to the cone and back without the ball dropping to the floor. It may sound easy but if you add the competition element of a race, mistakes soon start to happen but that's good in a sense because they're having fun and are all chuckling and laughing just to come first! This worked really well so i'm glad we will be able to use that in the future.
The fourth part of the session was a game where 4 teams would be facing the ball, and whenever Jeff or Myself said go, they had to shoot to try and knock the ball off the cone. Whoever knocked it off first would earn a point for their team. It took them a little while to get use to but we have done it with other creches and it's worked well in a short amount of time. This is no problem at all and it allows us to adapt to different situations and explain elements more simply etcetera but most importantly it allows us to coach more which of course is our job!
We had some time to do some admin work and eat our lunch at the learning centre after finishing at Riverton but at 1:30 it was time for our next appointment. Bridgetown High School. We had a session which involved 30 boys, ranging from 14-16. We focused on ball control in our session. I took the warm up doing Chicken Or Hero and Active Stretching (asking the boys what stretch would be good for each body part and myself explaining why). Jeff set up for our session which involved 7 servers on the outside, 7 on the inside. We focused on right foot volleys back to the servers ,who had a ball, left foot volleys, chest control, knee control, headers, knee volleys, lace volleys and more technical controls for example chest then knee then bring it down and pass it back to the server. The boys were very talented and could do any drill that we gave them. The pitch we had today was full of thorns and a couple times I found a few inserted into my hand, which really hurt and drew a lot of blood. The footballs also suffered and I think we should be expecting a few punctures tomorrow. The ball control session lasted a good half an hour, both Jeff and I's group doing really well and listening to all of our instructions and tips. We then finished the session with a football tennis tournament which went excellently, the boys are so athletic, agile and posses really great ball control which made the session go swimmingly. We are back at bridgeton next Wednesday. The teacher's were great there and very happy to have us there and they gave us some lovely food and drink. South African's definitely know how to cater for their guests, that's one thing i've learnt since being out here! One of the PE teachers is one of the top referee's in the country too and refereed at the 2010 world cup, which I thought was amazing personally. Not many people can say they have refereed in a world cup.
We had a very tiring day and by the time we got back to Cape Town and visited the civic centre to catch our bus, it was running 32 minutes late. Our option was to either wait 32 minutes or walk home which was quite a trek but something we've been meaning to see how long it takes. It took 25 minutes which meant our choice was the right one. Otherwise we would have to wait 32 minutes and then take a 20 minute bus journey on top.
A very tiring but experimental day. We are just going to chill tonight in our apartment and watch the united which is conveniently on ETV which we have on our TV. Happy days!
All the best
Luke
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