Soccer + baseball = fun

It was all about having fun and making friends at IQ Football’s most recent holiday clinic.

Twelve youngsters aged between six and 12 performed fun drills with soccer balls and exercised their legs and smiles at Craighall Sports Club for the week 26 to 30 October.

Coaches Elvin ‘Essien’ Kumwenda and Sean Szabo kept the youngsters on their toes with fun games such as football rounders – a game structured like baseball with two teams, one batting and one fielding.

Coach Kumwenda would roll the ball to the batters to kick before they ran through three bases marked with cones. The fielding side could use their hands and would try catch the ball or throw the ball into the bases before the batters reached them, to get the batters out.

This was hugely popular with the children and inning after inning was played between other drills.

“A lot of parents wanted to get their children out during the school holidays and we wanted to do it safely,” said Szabo.

“These games help the youngsters improve their skills but the main focus is fun. We want the children to enjoy themselves, do their touches [of the ball] and play with other children.”

He added that a break from sports during hard lockdown left many young children missing out on developing social skills only acquired when interacting with each other at an early age.

“We are also big on encouraging the children and giving them positive feedback. We had our online training videos during lockdown but the children benefit much more from our encouragement in person.”

Another holiday clinic was hosted by IQ Football between 16 and 19 October, but their next two holiday clinics will only be in December.

The first will be 7–11 December and the second 14–18 December.

The soccer school adheres to Covid-19 safety protocols including temperature checks, sanitising, social distancing and Covid-19 questionnaire forms.

Details: IQ Football 079 607 6101.