We are not the first group to descend on Alta Vista and run some kind of soccer camp or tournament. But we are the first to bring Futsal and the first to give specific attention to girls.
Christ for the City runs these "after school" athletic programs to keep kids out of trouble and to provide for them intentional role models who point them to God. The coaches that I worked with this week support 4 levels of play, with approximately 2 coaches per level. The word I had learned for "coach" in Spanish was Entrenador, but here the word they use is Profe (like the first part of "professor" but with the accent on the o).
The Profes have been very interested in using Futsal in their soccer school. And today we got to see it in action.
Mornings at the soccer school start out the same. The players roll in (punctuality is not important here in the least) and walk right up to their Profe to greet them and shake their hand (very respectful and honoring). The players are gathered on the steps for an opening prayer, then a 5 minute encouragement about staying out of trouble and focusing on God, then a prayer (followed, of course, by tons of soccer). Each day that we were there we added a little twist - one of the Northrup girls would stand up in front of the students and give a breif devotional that they had written. I was very proud of Gillian, Aubrey, and Shelby. Each of them prepared, entirely on their own, and delivered poignant messages with a scripture verse.
Then we got to playing - this time the soccer school coaches were running the sessions and I got to observe. The Profes ran their sessions while playing Goal Keeper, just like we do at ESC and the way I first saw it done prior to that. I won't bore you with play by play Futsal action, but the review from the coaches afterwards was great. And what I observed was even better. Remember, you couldn't ask for a better student than a poor kid from a developing country who watches, thinks about, and plays soccer all the time, and who is voluntarily at a camp. High soccer IQ. Needless to say they pick up on stuff quickly.
At the end of the soccer school, we all exchanged kind words and I gave the Profes some gear. I actually gave one guy the shirt off my back. Kinda funny. I am really "blanco" and they loved it.
On the way home for lunch, Aubrey spiraled into sickness - this time not stomach crus but malaise and fever. Bummer. So we had a little curveball for the afternoon.
Lauren was kind enough to take Aubrey to her apartment to lie down while Christian, Josue and I met up with Maltez at a different school where I was supposed to coach a women's Futsal team. Maltez had been using my visit as bait to attract people to be introduced to his Ubabalo ministry. Come meet a Profe from the U.S., but first you will need to listen to a bit about the Ubabalo curriculum. We arrived at about 1:30 and sat thru the last hour of his Ubabalo overview while Gillian and Shelby made thank you cards.
A bit of bad parenting to share. At one point I told Shelby that the bathroom was down the stairs and to the right down a hallway (Ubabalo training was done in a classroom). After about 20 minutes, Josue mentioned that Shelby wasn't back yet. In a panic, I found Shelby crying in the bathroom - she didn't have any toilet paper. Nice job, Dad. Thank goodness for Josue. Had he not mentioned something, who knows how long she could have been down there.
Once Maltez wrapped up I introduced myself to the room and got us out to the court as quickly as possible. These people were here for the Futsal - I knew that. As it turned out, there were decent "chicas" Futsal players there, but none from a federation team like I had been told. This was a random assembly of older girls. Very few of the collection of chicas played on the same team together and there was a wide range of skill. Some of them were on good Universoty teams and could play; some struggled a bit.
Also there were ten Salvadorian Futsal Profes who were there to learn from a Gringo.
All in all it went verywell. The girls played/trained for about an hour. I stood with the coaches and we shared ideas. They asked some questions and Josue would translate for me. I trained the girls quite a bit - much like I would do back home. With a hodgepodge of players and talent there are certain things that can easily be addressed in a setting like that and certain things that are not really relevant. But we talked thru some theoretical tactical stuff too and I drew pictures. There were two men's team players from the Univerisity as well, so I used them as Goal Keepers and demonstrated a bit how we run our sessions.
And, of course, after the girls were done the coaches played against each other, me included. Put a round ball on the ground anywhere in the world and 9 out of 10 people are up for a game. It is an international language.
Because of Aubrey's illness, we decided to move things around a bit after the afternoon session. So instead of a nice dinner out, Josue and Lauren got Chinese takeout for us to eat at her apartment. It wasn't good Chinese, but I loved the idea. I was in the mood for something different.
We are now split up between two apartments in the same complex. No more mission house. No more soccer or Futsal. The "work" part of our trip is over. Friday (tomorrow) is a fun day and Saturday we fly back to the States. But this was far from work. This was easy. CFTC has been incredible in their planning and organization. I am impressed with what they are doing in El Salvador and they have a good collection of people on the ground. I would do it again.
Time to wrap up our thank you cards!
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