Today I travelled to Coombeshead Academy in Newton Abbot for a Soccer School holiday day.

Today I was assigned with the juniors to help assist with another coach.

For today I didn’t need to plan a session due to the other coach taking over and I am there to help assist. I learnt from Tuesday that I needed to find out prior to the day to see if I needed to plan a session.

Today consisted of fun games, learning new skills, penalty shootouts and a large Sister Tournament.

A sister tournament is when there are different teams in each age group that all make up a large team. For example, today there was 4 teams in each age group; pink, yellow, blue and whites.

There were 3 age groups in total, so the teams would play against their age groups and then all the scores will be added up in total to gain a winner. In total there were three teams for each colour, this kept it fair between all age groups.

Today there were a couple of injuries that I needed to see to.

There was an athlete that has an ongoing injury which their parent had contacted me prior to the day to see if I could possibly go through some stretches that this athlete could do alongside some exercises with a resistance band (making sure he was doing the exercises properly).

Another injury was general first aid as they had fallen over on the Astro Turf causing a graze on their knee so I cleaned up the cut and applied a plaster to stop the rubber crumb from getting stuck on the knee.

What Went Well

Today went well due to the minimal injuries and lots of fun. The aim of today was to ensure all the kids had lots of fun for the whole total of 6 hours. I also was able to arrange a cool down session for all of the children at the end of the day. Due to them running around pretty much all day, I felt as if they would need a good cool down to ensure their muscles aren’t aching or sore the next day.

For the cool down we did dynamic stretches and followed by static stretches all sat in a large circle.

What Could Have Gone Better

For the cool down we could have done staggered leaving times and instead of doing an extra large cool down, I could have provided a cool down for each individual age groups.

Next Time

Next time I will ensure that we do staggered leaving to be covid safe and to ensure the parents are all socially distant when collecting their children.