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Diaries - Soccer Camp Coach, USA
I spent the summer working on children""s soccer camps in the USA; It was an absolutely amazing experience and a summer I""ll never forget. I flew into Newark airport (New Jersey) on the Saturday, along with a load of other coaches who I""d never met before. We were met by full time staff from the coaching company then taken to a local hotel to sort out who was going where etc. Once back at the hotel we were put into groups of 4 or 5 and given the location where we would be working for the first week. Each of the groups had a captain, who was basically a lad who had been out coaching before and new the script. We were then issued with a rental car and headed out on our coaching mission. Each week on the Thursday we would find out which town we would be coaching in next, then on the Saturday or Sunday, we would head over to the next location and do it all over again. Everywhere we worked we stayed with families of kids that we were coaching, this was amazing. The families were so friendly and would often organize all kinds of activities, we would be out on families"" boats and Jet skis, quad biking, lying by the pool or down the local mall using the accent to meet a few ladies.
The whole summer was an amazing time, at the end of the summer a group of us rented a Jeep and traveled round visiting families we had stayed with earlier on in the summer and visiting a good few college towns.
I had heard all kinds of stories before I went about the whole experience and thought they sounded a bit far fetched; however I discovered that was not the case and would recommend it to anyone who wants to have a wicked summer but is not afraid of a bit of hard work
Do....
- Plan what you are going to do with the kids; three hours will absolutely fly if you have a plan of what you are going to do. If not it will seem like a lifetime, especially as you will probably be rough from the amount of beer, the families encouraged you to drink at the previous nights BBQ party.
- Search around for the best job before you go, there are loads of companies so don""t just go with the first job offer you see.
- Take stuff from England, postcards, old programs, Tea towels with a map of you town on it, etc!!!! Yes you may think they are tacky but they will be appreciated by families you stay with who will find them quite novel.
- Go out in every college town you can find, the big cities are great but they are not college towns. Most American college towns are quality, every weekend is like freshers week on steriods!!!!!! With cheap booze and cheap accommodation!!!!!!!
Don""t....
- Take a quarter of the clothes you think you""ll need, your first stop will be the outlet stores where they are practically giving the clothes away. By the third trip to the outlets you will be throwing half your clothes away especially that shit T-shirt from next!!!!!!!!!
- Be afraid to use the accent!!!! It is like having magical powers. The Americans are great people and they love the English accent, for some reason. Be a little cheeky and you will get into clubs for nothing, get free food in restaurants, access to country clubs, you name it.
- Think you are Pele, everyone has done it. Joining in a game with the kids, the ball sits up perfectly for you to let fly, instead of going straight in the top corner it heads right at little Johnny""s head and nearly knocks the poor kid out. Apart from putting the poor kid off football for life, you are panicking in case Mom and Dad want to sew your ass!!!!!!!!!!!
- Expect a holiday. It was a quality summer but was hard work at times when you are out in 100 degrees heat running round for three hours trying to keep these kids motivated. Expect plenty of headaches and to lose your voice after the first week. |