Special Olympics Sports & Training Camp winds down

Special Olympics Belize hosts an annual Sports and Fitness Training Camp and this year’s session is winding down. And while the official closing activity will be a field trip to Altun Ha on Friday, today was the culmination of a three day coaches training workshop. The athletes spent the day showing what they’ve learnt in Bocce and Floor Hockey. This year the youths had the pleasure of working with Global Trainer Bruce Baldwin, who volunteered his coaching services and donated the equipment for the camp. We found out more about Baldwin’s donation and got more details on the annual summer camp from National Director for Special Olympics Belize, Akintade Atkens.

Akintade Atkens, National Director, Special Olympics Belize
“The camp not only prepares them for the task ahead, which is usually the international games that we participate in on a yearly basis, but in a way it improves the social skills of the athletes who would have been denied such opportunities in many of the regular camps that we have on a yearly basis in Belize. So the camp definitely engages our athletes in the most constructive ways and as you would have witnessed, we used the camp too to broaden the sport skills of our coaches. Our athletes are very fortunate to have somebody who is highly trained from Special Olympics international who had introduced two new sports to them—in fact two sports; floor hockey and Bocce and of course our coaches are benefiting from this as well because at the end of the training they will become certified Special Olympics coaches.”

Bruce Baldwin, Global Trainer, Special Olympics Intl
“I received a communication from Special Olympics that team Belize was looking for Bocce Equipment and floor hockey equipment my thought was, as a trainer, if they need the equipment, they need someone to teach it. So I got in touch with Atkens and mailed him and he said of course come on down. I’m a volunteer, my wife is a volunteer so we actually found out that because there was no equipment here, and there were no sports bureaus in the country, we were able to just buy all the equipment in the states and brought it down with us.”

Forty students, fifteen coached and other volunteers participated in this year’s summer camp. The activities were also aimed at bolstering the skills of coaches and athletes that will represent Belize in the third Central American Games for High School aged students with Disabilities, which is scheduled for October in Panama.