One afternoon at City of Refuge in downtown Atlanta, the kids were not particularly interested in the session that had been prepared for them or even really practicing at all.
Program Director Ricardo Montoya was paying a visit to evaluate the progress being made at the site. Things started out slowly as the kids struggled to understand the concept and mechanics of the warm up drill. Ricardo then asked Coach DeAndre and Coach Adrian, the two regular instructors with Refuge FC, to join in to help them visualize how it was done. Once this happened, the kids were fired up and ready to compete alongside their coaches. The warm up drill then progressed into a small sided 4v4 activity with coaches on each team playing alongside the kids. Ricardo even showed the youth a thing or two such as simple techniques like stopping the ball and cutting to change direction quickly.
The activity then progressed onto a larger field where the same principles were driven home. The heat really turned up when the match conditions portion of the session began as the two teams not only had scoring on their mind but for each goal conceded the team that gave it up had to do a set of five push-ups. A few other volunteers working at City of Refuge even jumped in and added to the numbers to make it more interesting. At the end of the day, the score was meaningless as everyone had a great deal of fun and a greater appreciation for the game of soccer.
Ricardo’s visit was an all-around success as he had pointers for the young coaches and he engaged the kids. The session involved skill development, strategy, competition, and last but not least… fun.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Let Atlanta know what you think