I am passionate about football so I am excited to be able to teach younger kids how to play football as a service. This will test my leadership skills and my planning skills for when I am coaching.

There haven’t been any sessions in service where we can meet the people in person because of covid, and so far we have only been sending recordings of certain football drills to the school. This inconvenience hopefully gets resolved soon so it will be a lot easier to teach the students football. This will also make it easier for the children to learn football as well. We have also learned strategies in how to teach and have assigned each person to a warm-up drill, main drill, and cool-down drill. This will make it a lot easier for everyone in the service to be involved and also give them a chance for the children to learn from different people.

August Reflection:

I am not too sure how this service journey is going to look because of COVID restrictions blocking contact with us and the children that are willing to play football and learn football from us. I assume that we will have to send videos of us doing certain skills and drills for them to follow at their own school.

I have been playing football for most of my life and it is very interesting to see football in a different perspective. Looking at football in the perspective of a coach could change my perception of football training and make me appreciate certain stuff that coaches do that I wouldn’t really notice otherwise. I think that if the COVID issue gets solved, the service could be very helpful for me as a football player.

Final reflection:

I thought that this service overall was very fun and interesting. As a service group, we helped each other on the collaboration side and we all contributed by coming up with ideas. The attendance rate was very good so we could make the most of the time we have every week and come up with ideas and drills that we could coach. The most challenging part of the brainstorming part was realising that we were coaching children under the age of 6 so we couldn’t include very complex drills and every activity has to be very straightforward and easy to follow. These children also have no experience with football so it was also very difficult thinking of activities that would require very low football abilities but still be a football activity. We coached middle schoolers in our school to practice coaching the younger children. This was very fun and it brought football in a different perspective and a new light that I had not seen before despite playing football for around 10 years.

When it came to coaching the children, I found it very difficult. We tried considering all the possibilities but there were still some things that we had not considered about the children, for example, their attention span and that not everyone might be interested in playing football. Appealing to children was very difficult for me because it is not something that is very familiar to me and there aren’t any young children that I spend time with to learn this skill. There were also children crying and not listening which made it frustrating and tested our patience. We coached the children three times which wasn’t as much as we were hoping for but at least we still got to coach the children in person. Activities such as Simon says and duck duck goose was easy to start off the sessions because it was well-known and easy to follow. We then just let them dribble the ball around as much as they wanted with goals for them to shoot in. There were people from the service who can walk around and help them or play with them. At the end of the last session, we played a match with everyone and although some children were confused about what to do, most of them found it fun.

First day

On the first day of a project week, we played basketball with a basketball coach. This was very enjoyable because there are two people in our group that already plays basketball and the other three are very inexperienced so we could improve our basketball abilities. We did some drills to improve some skills and then we did a half-court match. I have never done basketball drills and played basketball with a coach and the only time I play basketball is just casually at lunchtime. This was a very fun though and I enjoyed playing basketball. This basketball activity was around 3 hours long from 11-12 pm.

Second day

On our second Project Weekday we helped out people at Willing hearts from 12:30-4:30. We volunteered to help out people who cook for people in need of food. I thought that this experience was very good knowing that I helped people who don’t have the same privileges as me. We helped wash and to wipe dishes, defrost chicken and marinate chicken. The people working for willing hearts were very kind and thankful that we could help out with their charitable campaign.

Third day

Our final day of project week was a very relaxed day as we spent time in a lazy river in a water park. This was very relaxing and it felt very nice as the last day of project week. Although there were some activities that we couldn’t do, I still enjoyed all three days of the project week.

I want to grow both individually as a player, and I want to grow with my teammates as a team throughout the season. I want to improve my leadership and collaboration skills.

GRADE 11

This year the football season was very different because we weren’t allowed to play against other school teams so we could only just play against our own team. I think it was harder to consistently go to the training because we weren’t training for any football games; However, we received a technology that we have never used before to further improve the team. We had trackers on our feet that can track who we pass to, how many touches we are using or even the amount of shots we take. These types of things wouldn’t be possible without the trackers so it was very easy to see what we need to improve on individually. After every training session, I was able to know what I needed to improve on for the next training session so that I can improve. For example, my passing could be off and I can see how many times I miss passing the ball so I know that for the next training, I need to improve on my passing. There are a lot of statistics that I wouldn’t know without the Playermaker technology, for example, I am one of the fastest players on the team and I take a lot of touches for a goalkeeper.

I am not sure how this season of football will be because we can’t play against other schools so I am assuming that it will just be training with no external matches for the whole season which is a little disappointing because I was very excited to face against other schools which is a little bit demotivating. We could still make the most of this short season though by having good training sessions and being ready for next year where we hopefully can have SEASAC and go against other schools in the league.

After having a couple training sessions, I think that I am really improving by being more conscious on my passing and touches because after every training session I can see how many failed passes I did and how many touches I took so being aware helps me a lot. I can also see the usage of my weaker foot, which got better over time because I was aware that I didn’t use my weak foot that much and I would only use my dominant foot. Even though my weaker foot isn’t as good as my dominant foot, I still tried using my weaker foot much more to get a higher ratio between my right and my left at the end of the training session. I think that there are certain stuff I can still improve on for the rest of the season such as completing most of my passes.

GRADE 12

I wanted to try out something new and something that I have never done before. DJ club seemed very fun and interesting. I have always been a big fan of listening to music but I don’t do much in terms of making music so I wanted to try this. I will also meet new people in this activity so I can improve my collaboration skills.

I have always been very interested in music but mostly just listening to music so I thought that it would be very interesting to create music instead of listening to music which I am used to doing. I think that this could shift my perspective on music and show me a different side to music. This is also something that I have never done before so this will be a very new experience for me.

What aspects of CAS are you looking forward to?

I have always been doing activities for school in the school football team, but something that I will try for the first time this year will be joining the DJ club. I was always really into music so I thought that I could just give it a try. I’ve had 2 sessions of the DJ  club and so far it has been a really new experience and very fun. The service I am doing this year will be very similar to my activities. Instead of playing football for the school team, I am going to be coaching younger people. Football is not new to me at all, but, coaching will be a very new experience for me. I chose this service because I thought that it would be the easiest for me and I am passionate about this service. I don’t think I would enjoy a service that I am not really passionate about.

How might you plan your year of CAS in order to maintain balance?

One way I can plan and organise my CAS would be by using the manage back. I think that Manageback is a very useful and easy way to  maintain balance so I won’t be disorganised in the future.

Hello, My name is Riki Van Thillo. Last year I did IGCSE math at a standard level. My feelings that are associated with math is usually frustration or boredom. I learn math well when someone explains it to me so that I can understand it for myself and then do it for myself. I think that my biggest strength is being optimistic, and my biggest weakness is my organisation skills and critical thinking. I never felt fully interested in maths. I think that I am good at maths when I understand the concept, however, I start becoming lazy when it starts getting more difficult and confusing. When I get stuck in a question, I tend to ask for help immediately without trying to figure it out for myself.

This year in grade 10, I think that I really enjoyed my classes and talking to my classmates. I was very happy to meet my friends again from last year after npt seeing them for a while. I also got to meet new people who i have never met before, and I got to play football with some of them. Something that is not enjoyable is that I can’t meet all my friends due to the COVID regulations, however I still got to meet some of my closer friends. I think that a goal I had was to be more engaged in my classes so that my understanding devolops in my classes.

Playing football with new people improved my leadership skills, and my communications skills. This helped me talk to people I have never met before and to work as a team. I am forced to talk to everyone on the pitch, so I have to talk to everyone. I also have to bring the team together and help people talk to other people which is also challenging; however, we couldn’t play football properly due to COVID 19.

Next year for IB I chose to do higher-level Geography, Sports Science, and Business Management. I am also doing standard-level English language and literature, Spanish B and Mathematics: Analysis and Approaches. I chose to do higher-level geography because I decided to take the course this year and I found it very interesting. I play football so I was very interested in sports science. Next year, I won’t have as much time as I do now to play football and I always want to be connected to football, so even if I am not playing football, I will still be studying something related. I also picked business management because I am very interested in the practical side of marketing rather than the theoretical side. I picked Spanish B SL because I was struggling with Spanish this year, so I think that I would struggle a lot more in Spanish HL. I think that I am going to have to improve on working at home for Spanish next year. I chose to do Mathematics: Analysis and approaches rather than Applications and Interpretations because I think that Math (AA) is more recognized by universities. This will make my choice to go to a university a lot easier. However, I think that I’m going to have to study a lot because it is harder than math (AI). Lastly, I picked the English language and literature because I want to try something new rather than just carrying on with what we’ve been doing for the past 2 years. I am interested in the advertisement side of English, rather than just writing about plays or books.