Field Work – Soccer at Eastside

                 Friday 18th March was my first day volunteering at Eastside Elementary School. This Elementary School is located in 3850 Roswell Road, Marietta, Georgia 30062. When I arrived at the school for the first time I was feeling a little nervous and shy. I was 15 minutes early so I signed myself in and talked to others at the front desk. We started talking about how the kids were in this school and how they are a sporty bunch of kids. When it was 9:40am I went to meet the Physical Education teacher. She told me a bit about herself and the students here at Eastside Elementary. She said she has been working here for years now and she loves it. She introduced me to the girl students and then I told the girl students a bit about me. I told them how I was from a different country from here so if they do not understand me all they have to do is ask me to repeat what I said. A few of the girls made jokes about how I sound like I am from Russia. They are a great laugh anyway. I then asked the girls to tell me there names and a bit about them. We all walked to the gym because it was too cold to play soccer outside today. A few of the girls have played soccer before and some have not so this was a challenge for me.

                We started off by splitting the girls into four groups. I asked my group what sports they liked to play and what they liked doing in their spare time. I am glad to say that they love playing sports. I got my group of girls to start warming up. We played a game called the animal game. This involves the coach (me) shouting out an animal and the girls had to try and be that animal. For example, if I shouted “SNAKE” all of the girls would lay on the ground wriggling around making hissing noises like a snake. I would keep shouting different animals to see how good they got at doing this. After we played this warm-up game we moved onto playing duck duck goose just to give them a slight break. We played this for about 5 or 10 minutes. After this we stood up and got into a circle to stretch off our legs. I did the stretch and they copied it and helped me count to 20 then moved onto a different stretch and so on. It was time to start playing real soccer now. We started off with a soccer technique called ‘passing’. I got the girls to stand in two lines and all they did was pass the ball back and forward to each other. I made sure the girls knew how to pass the ball first. I got them to pass the ball if the inside of their foot and ball the leg through for power. After doing this drill for 10 minutes I asked them a few questions on passing. I asked them what side of the foot they had to use to pass the ball with for example. After this we all stood in a circle around me and they had to pass the ball to each other. The aim was to not hit me with the ball and to focus on the accuracy of the pass. They were getting better at this as the drill went along. Of course I ended this session with a game at the end but they had to focus on getting 5 passes between their team more than the focus on scoring and winning.

Overall the first day was very successful in my opinion. I learned so much about these girls already and it was only the first day. The girls were very sociable and they wanted to get to know me as much as I wanted to get to know them. They all seemed very keen on soccer and I can’t wait to move onto another soccer technique next Friday.

Friday 18th March 2016

2 hours

Eastside Elementary School