Saints Southwest Easter Holidays Football Club

Crediton Football Club- 9am till 3pm

Today I assisted coaching the junior athletes for Saints Easter holidays soccer school with another coach.

To start with, all coaches needed to ensure Covid-19 guidelines were in place; social distancing markers for parents dropping athletes off, ensuring cones were laid out to keep all groups bags separate from the other groups and making sure when treating athletes I needed to have PPE (hand sanitizer, gloves, mask).

We played mini games, taught football skills (ball mastery), played penalty shoot outs, crossbar challenge and ended with a mini football tournament.

This was my first school holiday soccer school and meeting new coaches so I was a little nervous. However once I was there and my supervisor was there I felt a little more relaxed due to having a familiar face.

Next time, I need to make sure I don’t feel so nervous and make sure I come out of my comfort zone when going to new places. I need to feel more confident in myself with my knowledge of coaching and rehabilitation.

There were only minor first aid injuries that occurred throughout the day. Cut knee- cleaned and applied a plaster. Cut finger- cleaned and applied plaster.

The last injury of the day was pain in the ankle from an inverted injury. I did grade 4 mobilisations on the ankle joint in dorsi/plantar flexion motion. Grade 4 due to minimal pain but needed to slightly increase ROM. The athlete explained that after 1 minute of mobilisations that their pain had reduced, giving them the confidence to apply pressure on their foot again.

We ended the day with some static stretches to cool down and then a certificate presentation for the winners of the penalty shootout, coaches star of the day and overall star selected by all coaches.