Friday 23 November 2012

Day 1 at Kutumb


It was a typical winter morning; cold and foggy. Being a Sunday morning, the city
was sleeping and thus was free of its chaos and commotion. All geared up, I arrived
at Humayun’s Tomb to teach as well as play some football. The grass was green and
fresh, which is every footballer’s dream. There were around 16-17 odd kids aged
10-14. We started with a quick introduction followed by a warm up session with
several exercises for the ankles, hamstrings, toes as well as the hip. While most of
the children followed instructions, they were obviously a couple of arrogant ones
who did the exercises reluctantly. Since it was my first day, they had sent a coach to
guide me and help me out.

Having dropped Hindi two years ago, I had doubts as to whether I could
communicate with the children properly. However, having not achieved high levels in
Hindi, the children were easy to communicate with. Having their own friends circle,
the children were upset at times when they were chosen to do the drills with their
other peers. However, having taught them that their personal life does not portray
their work on the field, I was happy to see them applying this concept.

Then came their most enjoyable activity, the match. The coach told me that they
usually pick their own teams, but this time I wanted to pick the teams for them.


I purposely put a few of the kids that weren't getting along too well together as I
wanted them to learn to communicate on the field. The two that were appointed as
captain showed some evident leadership qualities. Watching their game from the
sideline, I knew that the only thing we’ll need to work on is teamwork. After all, we
have a tournament starting from 2nd December and they have some areas where
they can improve. We will be sending 3-4 teams according to their age groups.

Well, overall it was a good first experience and all I can say is that I was impressed
and my expectations were completely outdone.
Looking forward to another great session with the boys…

Thursday 8 November 2012

Pre-Training Jitters

"The Beautiful Game", as the name suggests, is none other than the world's most popular sport, football. And no, I don't mean American Football which is played with the hands(destroying the whole purpose of the name, I am talking about football, or as Americans call it, soccer.
This blog is going to concentrate on the program Kutumb, where football is taught to young, underprivileged  students to forget all their problems, and just enjoy the game. But, I am not just there to make them enjoy the sport, I am volunteering to take the skills of those 9-14 year old boys and girls to a new level, or in other words, to teach them the game of football.
The program is about to start for me, and i'm having some jitters. A few of the hardships I think I am going to face are-

1. The ages of the children range from 9-14. I hope they are mature enough to take the game to a serious level, beyond fun. I might need to rethink what I have in mind for them in case they are not.

2. I hope they will be able to handle the vigorous training sessions as they require a bit of hard work and physical fitness.

3. I hope they will listen to me and I can control them all by myself for the long training sessions. The fact is, may just be a year or two elder than some of them, so they may tend to ignore me at times.

4. Hopefully they are all able to come regularly for practice despite the freezing temperatures in the morning. Also, as we know with these financially poorer families, they tend to send their children to work instead of school and games, and thus they might not end up coming regularly for practice.

5. I hope they are open enough to tell me any of the problems they are facing like we do with our coaches and are not shy or scared to share things with me.

Hopefully, it all goes well and we are able to have a good first session.