Berger Football Camp enters 4th year
It has been one of the most consistently successful summer camps in the city and one reason why is the dedication of its organisers and sponsors. Ann-Marie Williams reports.
Ann-Marie Williams, Reporting
Sixty children, ages six to fifteen years signed up last week for the annual Berger Football Camp underway at a football field in the St. Martin de Porres area of Belize City. According to co-ordinator Emerson Guild, football is not all they do.
Emerson Guild, Co-ordinator, Berger Camp
“We do some classwork, which includes math, spelling, public speaking. And those kids who show an attitude to drama, we have a special class in that area who will be touching on that doing, their public speaking with them.”
Guild says this is not your ordinary came where children enrol and there’s no follow-up.
Emerson Guild
“We interview each child over the last three years and find out how they live, their hygiene, their level of attitude for school, are they in school, are they not in school, do they want to go to high school, are they good in sports, do they want to play sports? And also how they eat and how they do day to day life.”
The data collected will be used to produce a youth camp manual.
Today was the start of week two and the forty-five children we met were looking forward to the four-week event. Nigel Franklin is one of the original youngsters who started with the Berger programme three years ago. He’s back as a coach to impart some of the skills he learnt. Franklin says it’s no easy job to mould the boys in his group to be great footballers as it takes…
Nigel Franklin, Coach
“Teamwork and behaviour and attitude.”
Eugene John Arana is only six years old, the youngest member of the team.
Ann-Marie Williams
“Should you kick it with the point of your toes, your heel or what? How you kick the ball?”
Eugene John Arana, Participant
“With the side of my foot.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“Why?”
Eugene John Arana
“If you kick it with the front of your toe you could bruk yuh toe.”
one of only two girls coaching the boys is twelve year old Kara Kisling. She’s alarmed that in this 21st Century people still can’t deal with a female coach.
Kara Kisling, Coach
“People are too old fashioned and they don’t believe that girls could play the sport.”
As someone who’s playing the sport of football for over three years, she says not much has changed. The boys are still difficult to coach.
Kara Kisling
“Most of them don’t like to listen and you need to put the discipline in them and it’s good because then people can see that there is a girl that wants other girls involved in the sport.”
Ann-Marie Williams for News 5.
Guild says he has plans to establish a wellness project for youths using the data collected over the three-year period of the camp.
