A Session of Hockey at EF Sportability Club

We had a pretty good turn out on Saturday and it was great to see some of the newer members back after the Christmas break. It was also great to welcome a brand new member Daisy who came along to see what we get up to. It was a pleasure to see her get involved straight away and to settle in so quickly. We hope she enjoyed herself, along with all our members, and will be back to enjoy another sport next Saturday.
Anyway, back to Saturday and after a short  warm up the whole session was dedicated to the sport of Hockey. First of all it was some ball familiarisation and I am not talking about recognising a tennis ball in a line up here. This is basically moving the ball around the hall using the hockey stick keeping close control so that when it gets trickier later on, in a competition scenario, ball control does not let you down. We then moved on to a traffic light game led by Ollie. When Ollie held up a red cone it meant you and your ball should stop. When it was orange (amber) it was stand still and move your ball from side to side with your stick. Lastly, when Ollie held up a green cone  then it was Go and move around the hall moving the ball as you went.

After a short break it was on to a more advanced form of skill control by controlling the ball around a slalom course of cones and scoring between the cones at the end. Taking it up a notch we then pitted members against each other along parallel slalom courses in some races.

After the main break for drinks and snacks we changed to some games of bench hockey. It is best explained by looking at the pictures above but basically teams face off against each other with the hockey sticks placed through the bench with cones for goals at each end. It is a lot like table football in a way moving the ball from one end to the other while your opposition are trying to do the same in the other direction. As you can see we managed to have two games going side by side which allowed the teams to swap around and play each other.
​We finished off with some games of hockey using the whole hall and using the benches as goals. We spit the group in to three teams and had a series of short games so that each team played the other two and put all the skills they had learnt and practised in to good use.

Our Star of the Week was Liam, pictured here with Ollie.

It was a great session all in all and the kids really did seem to enjoy themselves. The session raced by and before we knew it the time had come to go home. The coaches conferred at the end of the session and awarded the star of the week to Liam for his enthusiasm throughout the session and showing some great skills. A very well done to Liam!
Join us again next Saturday for some more fun where I believe that Coach Alan and his team may be lining up a session of Rugby based games