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| Four teams ready to play games 1 & 2 of the summer tourney! |
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Are you ready for some more
fútbol????? Now that students and teachers are back in the swing of school, I have been helping get some of our proposed convivir projects going in both the High school and grade schools. At times in Youth Development, the events are new, existing because of good conversations, shared vision, friendship, motivation, and hardwork in collaborations with adult and youth counterparts, and other times my role is more supportive by working with existing events. A real need in this community and many others in Costa Rica is the extra-curricular activities we take for granted as students in the US. In the high school, we have worked to start a new sports competition between small teams of students from different grades. Our first official tournament was last year, with the winners now serving as a part of the planning committee. This year we have expanded to two tournaments (summer and fall) with more teams participating and even two ladies teams! The high school has also installed lights in the gym for night games, its first ever trophy case, and a newly redesigned entryway which looks amazing. Each winning team will have a trophy with their team photo next to it in the case. We are hoping events like this help build school spirit and offer the community at large an opportunity to enjoy attending the finals and watching their young athletes. In the future, we hope to have inter-instituional competitions and branch out into other sports. To read more about it (in Spanish) and see more official photos (de Don Esteben), goto: http://colpejibaye.blogspot.com/
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| Lines at the Gates Before the Competition |
In support of a grade school level inter-institutional
fútbol event hosted by the Ministerio de Educación (MEP), CJ participated as the tournament photographer and I as the assistant coach for the Plaza Vieja team. Teams from all of the grade schools I work with in Pejibaye, El Humo, and Plaza Vieja, and a nearby grade school in Oriente sent male and female teams to compete in soccer games in the center of Pejibaye. We were excited at the turnout of teams (groups of male or female 6th graders) and the parental support. I even learned a new cheer...vamos (clap clap clap) vamos (clap clap clap). Everyone was excited to play and the best part was seeing a team go over and shake hands with the winning team unprompted. Good sportsmanship is a beautiful thing!
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| Last Minute Coaching |
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| 2014 MEP Pejibaye Soccer Tournament |
And that's not all...another MEP event this year is the Day of Sports in celebration of atheletics. All of the grade schools and high school plan different activities for their students to participate in during that day. CJ and I attended the grade school in Pejibaye's celebration of sports, where we saw sack races between each of the grades 1 through 6 students and the teachers. That was followed by a race where students had a spoon in their mouths with a lime on it and they had to run to the finish line without dropping their lime on the ground. We were thinking the limes would be put to good use as fresco (juice) after the game was over because it is hot hot hot here during summer! I was also incredibly proud that many of the students recognized me from the days where we planted trees and the MEP sporting competition, and one of the grade school student's I have been tutoring in English told me that she passed her exam!!! [A funny non-sports story related to tutoring is the day that I introduced her to flash cards as a way to memorize new vocabulary (words about weather conditions) and we put Aunt Linda's markers to good use to make the drawings to go on the other side of the flash card. She even drew a snowman to represent snow because she correctly pointed out I did not bring a white marker :)]
I hope you are enjoying school sports now as much as I do!
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