Last week was the end of the season for our weekend matches in the Central Coast Football competition. This has been a great experience for the kids and I believe it was also a great chance to give a point of reference for the work we are doing each week as a group in training.
A few of the experiences I felt the kids have ‘endured’, have perhaps not been the typical ‘football lessons’. They have occurred within the matches on the weekends, however they have been great opportunities for the kids to learn what I believe to be very important life lessons.
The first is their appreciation for the need to respect the referees, despite feeling at times that the decisions were not necessarily fair. This has been a constant theme that we have discussed as a group, and I have seen a great improvement in this area. I think this is a fantastic exercise for the kids to recognise that in certain situations there are people in authority who may make decisions that they think may not be fair, but that this cannot be an excuse and that they are to give their best regardless.
The other key point that I feel the group has continued to develop is their persistence in the face of adversity. Similar to their respect for referees, throughout the year the group has been faced with various obstacles that they have had to conquer to continue to move forward as a group. Examples of this include being in losing situations in games despite playing very well as a group, and having to play games with a player less due to injury or absence.
At the start of the season the kids would regularly look at these factors as an excuse, already conceding defeat before taking the field. However, as the season went on and we continued to discuss this as a group, the players began to see this merely as a challenge to break down and defeat!
These two developments in attitude have been extremely positive journeys for the kids, and have provided them with lessons for both football and their own challenges in different areas of their lives!
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