This weeks Sideline Story:

I was standing in for the coach of the 7^th grade all-girls team that my daughter is in, and due to holiday absences we had to ask a couple of younger first kicks players to step to make up the numbers. I noticed the Grants Braes team we were playing had a lot of players, but upon chatting with the coach - Kris - they have two teams playing at the same time, and to make the activities more fun the coach was running through various games with players from both teams together. There were lots of footballs involved, so the kids were getting loads of touches, and the coaches manner was really positive and encouraging. I thought this was a great idea and the coach is obviously passionate about his role.

During the game, when it became clear our team were not getting very much time on the ball, Chris evened things up by only having four Grants Braes players on the pitch. He then started giving his players some more challenges, such as waiting for our team to play the ball into their third before closing us down. All the time he and his players were respectful of ours, and at the end of the game all the players had a positive experience.

This was a really good example of a coach helping both his team and the opposition to focus on having fun experiences and falling in love with the game.

If you have a great story to share head to footballsouth.co.nz/CLUBS-1/Sideline-Stories and let us know about.