Monday, February 16, 2009

Hockey

I think that Coach Bradley must have told Durban Girls High School about my basketball duties because I am now in charge of U14 indoor field hockey. I don’t have to coach the girls, which is good because I know nothing about the sport. I have gotten the jist of the game fairly quickly since I went to a game and a practice, though. The girls have practice on Mondays for about 45 minutes at a field house about 5 minutes from school. Most of the U14 girls have never picked up a hockey stick before in their lives, so there is a lot of ‘learning’ going on. Their games are on Saturdays and last about 30 minutes (they play two 15 minute halves.) Since I am required to do some sort of extracurricular activity for at least 2 hours every week after school, I figured that hockey wasn’t a bad deal. They have about 5 weeks left of practice and only 3 games. The entire indoor field hockey club at the school consists of about 9 teams. They have a few ‘Open’ teams which are mainly the Juniors and Seniors, a few U16 teams, and a few U14 teams. Only the top two teams from each age group get to compete, so the coaches pick the top girls after practice and those are the ones who get to play in the Sat. game. During the following terms I will coach softball and possibly help out with outdoor hockey or basketball. I am not sure what I will do during the 4th term yet—but hopefully I will learn another sport.

Here is the indoor practice facility. Games are played at a school in a different town.

Here is their version of dynamic stretching.