Day 25

Day 25

Wednesday

St Winifred's to start today. An emotional fairwell! I insisted if any boys or girls wanted to take 5 minutes to wipe their tears during the session that would be fine! We played Capture the flag for a warm up, did some static stretching and then played some fun games, before starting a match to cap off an awesome 4 weeks. Mr Mconney, the principal couldn't play today because of a meeting so that was very gutting, seeing as he was such a big advocate for our programme. We gave out two prizes to the two boys we thought really put effort in our sessions, had good team work and was always present! Those two were boys called Lewis and Drew. Well done to them, very well deserved!!

Our second session was at Daryll Jordan which was a poor session in all honesty. Daryll Jordan is in the same bracket as Alma Paris and St George's, where a lot of the boys have ADHD and behavioural problems etc which we weren't told until after our session. We had planned a session that we would do with most schools which takes some concentration, however these boys lacked that and therefore it didn't really go to plan! Now we know that, we will definitely plan our sessions around their needs.

Our day finished at Barbados Community college where it was the opening session of our coaching football course that we are teaching as part of their football module in their physical education college course. Our focus for today's session was warm ups and in all honestly the session went fantastically. We had a group of around 25 students, varying in ages and it was a really nice learning atmosphere. This course puts us in the shoes of John Olaleye and Steve Eadon, who only 6-8 months ago were teaching us on how to coach. Aran started off with some dynamic stretches, Evan performed a fun numbers game, I showcased Arsenal vs Spurs and Shaz did Arsenal command with loads of variations, then collectively we showed them chicken or hero. The programme is quite demanding so the students were very tired but a lot was learnt seeing as we stripped all the warm ups back to basics, answered questions, asked for feedback and even gave homework! As I said before, I really enjoyed it and it went great, I would definitely say they learnt the importance of a warm up and that laps is not the answer.

Very long day today! Literally 12 hours.

All the best

Luke