The kids played Basketball last week at Sportability Club, whilst the adults had their annual meeting. Because of the meeting, and being tied up with the admin, there are only a few photos from the session. 
Ray advised that the early part of the session consisted of the kids
1 - Bouncing the ball,
2 - Passing across a circle,
3 - Dribbling around cones,
and
4 - Shooting practice
After a break they kids then put the practice with some small sided games

It was great to be back last Saturday and the weather once again allowed us to be outside for the whole session. We had a pretty good turnout and it was lovely to see Zakaa back for the first time this term. We also celebrated Callum's birthday and he brought in some lovely cakes which were gobbled up. Happy birthday Callum!
The session was all about Rugby and after the initial warm up routines the rugby balls were out for a number of games aimed to get the ball handling skills improved. The group started off in pairs passing the ball between them. Then it was passing the ball "over & under" so standing back to back the ball would go over the head or between the legs to your partner. Then it was side to side - again back to back passing the ball around the waist.
The group then formed a circle and played two games. The first being "beat the circle" where a child was picked and had to run around the outside of the circle whilst the rest had to pass the ball around as fast as they could seeing if they could move the ball faster than the runner. The second game involved picking someone to pass to on the other side of the circle then running across the circle and passing to that child whilst still running. 

Next up was some running around cones in a slalom fashion before passing. The team split with half at each end of the playground. Each player took it in turn to run around the cones with the ball before passing to the person at the front of the opposing queue, before joining the back to await the next turn.

After the main break we played some games of Rob the Nest. This is where the group splits up in to four small teams each with the own "nest" - a hoop. The game starts with all the rugby balls in the centre hoop. On the word to go each team sends one member to the centre to collect a ball and bring it back to the nest. The next player goes and so on until there are no balls left in the middle. The team with the most balls in their nest wins that phase of the game. The next phase is where each team, one person at a time, goes and steals a ball from another nest. At the same time the opposing teams could be stealing balls from your nest. It is fast and furious running and ball handling and when Ray called time the team with the most balls in the nest was the winner.
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At the end of a great session the coaches awarded the Star of the Week award to Anand, who as you can see below was delighted with the award. I cant include all the photos he sent in of his journey home but it is safe to say everyone he met knew about it!

Join us again next Saturday to see what Ray, Ollie and Alan have in store

IMPORTANT REMINDER FOR PARTENTS AND CARERS - we are holding our Annual General Meeting while the kids are having fun this Saturday (16th). We will start the meeting as soon as the kids are doing their activities. Please make every effort to attend as this is where we share opinions and decide how the club will run in the coming months and years. 

I am pleased to report that Epping Forest Sportability Club will back open this coming Saturday (9th). Our Head Coach Alan has managed to source some petrol so will be able to make it to Loughton. Crisis over, we hope! 

Hi All
Unfortunately Alan has not been able to get any petrol this week and no longer has enough to get to Loughton, never mind get home.
We are therefore left with no option but to cancel this week’s session of Sportability
 
If Alan does manage to get some petrol between now and tomorrow evening he will send an email to all parents and carers
 
Kind Regards
The Sportability Team

The weather was kind to us again last Saturday allowing a full session outside on the playground at Oak View School. We made the most of it with a session based around Cricket with skills practice on catching and throwing, as well as batting.
The session started, as always, with a warm up led by Ray and Ollie. It was straight in to some throwing and catching practice with the group splitting up in to pairs. Each pair had one tennis ball and a round disk on the ground. The aim was to bounce pass the ball to each other seeing if they could get the ball to bounce on the flat disk in the middle. Ideally it would be throw down on to the disk and the partner would catch the ball before taking their turn. The further the child was from the disk the harder it was to hit the target.
From there Ray led a catching game called Champion. All the kids lined up and when called Ray would throw a tennis ball to you. If you caught it you moved up the line, if you failed to catch it you moved down. At the end of the game the child at the top of the line was the Champion. The game was then spiced up a bit by adding a return throw in to the game. If you threw the ball and it was caught by Cliff ( Charlotte's Dad) in a bucket then you got to move up two spaces instead of one. 

After a quick drinks break it was on to throwing practice. The group split in to four with each group having their own wicket. A coach would roll the ball out to the first child in line and they had to pick the ball up and throw it at the stumps. Each child took it in turn and some progressed from under arm throwing to over arm and there was some very accurate throwing on display!
From there we moved to batting practice, hitting the ball off of plastic tees with the aim of getting it between two markers at the end of the playground. This was to emphasise aim and direction when batting.

After the main break we put everything together in a game of Three Tee Cricket.
The group split in to two teams. Those batting first had to take it in turns to hit three balls off of three tees. When they hit the balls then fielding team are not allowed to touch the balls until the last ball is hit. Once that last ball is hit the fielding team have to get all three balls and tees back to their starting position. In that time the batter has to run between two wickets as many times as possible. 

We had a fantastic session at Sportability on Saturday. The sun shone brightly and we made the most of it being outside on the school's playground playing Tennis. By the end of the session we had a few budding Emma Raducanu's out there on the court!

After a warm up led by Ray and Ollie the session got going with some basic skills. Balancing a tennis ball on a racket, hitting a ball up, bouncing it between racket and ground etc. The skill level increased as we went on and bouncing a ball on a racket then getting it  to stop dead on the racket was quite tricky! We then went on to some slalom games going around cones.

After a refreshment break it was on to a game of Build-a-Burger where the kids sandwich their tennis ball between two rackets. After going up and down the course without dropping the ball they then add a third person, another ball, another racket so there are now three rackets and at least two balls. The aim being to get as many as you can over several runs to build the layers without dropping any of the balls. Have a look at the photos below which probably demonstrate it a lot better than my explanation does.

After another drinks break we put up the Tennis nets for a couple of games of King / Queen of the Court. This is where the kids line up to hit a ball back over the net. The ball is thrown over by one of the coaches and the child must return it into the court without being caught. If they succeed they go to the back of the line and await the next round. Fail to return the ball in to the court or get caught then you join the catching team on the other side of the court.
In the end the last girl or boy left becomes the Queen or King of the court.
We had a couple of fantastic games with the first game actually being a tie between King Hal and Queen Charlotte. The second game Charlotte won outright so she was definitely Queen of the Court!

After the main break we moved inside for the last part of the session to play some Curling. The group split in to a few teams with the aim of getting as many stones inside the circle as possible. 

We had a great first session back after the summer holidays, on Saturday.
It was fantastic to see a number of familiar faces once again and get out in the fresh air to have fun playing sports.
This week focused around two sports, in the morning we played some hockey on the playground.  That started with a number of drills to familiarise the kids with controlling the tennis ball with the hockey stick, passing and shooting. Then, after a drinks break, the group split in to two teams to play a hockey match. There were some great performances but most notable was Pranav who was scoring goals literally for fun!

After the main break the fun moved indoors for some Boccia games, with a twist. Ray had some games that were based around rolling the boccia balls in turn to try and hit cones laid out of the hall floor. The first game was about which team could hit and collect the most cones. The game that followed had a twist whereby you could steal the opposing teams cones by hitting certain cones

At the end of the session it was no surprise that Pranav won the Star of the Week award, for his amazing performance in the hockey!
Well Done Pranav!

We look forward to another great session next weekend when we hope to see a few more of you back.

​If you know of any one else who would enjoy coming to our club then please invite them along or give them our website address or phone number. It would be great to see some new, young faces to join in the fun

See you next Saturday

We had another great session at EFSC on Saturday. Although the result did not go our way on Sunday we had a fabulous time playing football on Saturday morning. The weather was not the kindest and there were spots of rain all morning but that did not get in our way. 
We had another good turnout with a couple of old members returning for the first time in a while, which was great to see.
Ray led the morning session, assisted by Ollie and Alan, and after a warm up it was straight in to some skill drills. The kids formed a circle and it was all about passing the ball to each other around the circle, then passing back and forth to Ray in the middle of the circle. 
From there, Alan laid out some cones to form a slalom course for the kids to dribble the ball around before passing to their next team mate.  The football session was then rounded off by some small sided games. The group was split in to three teams so that they each played each other, and enabled teams to have a rest along the way. They put all their practice to good use and there were some great goals scored and everyone had a lot of fun.
It started to rain a bit heavier towards the end of the session so we moved inside and played some hockey. After a few moments dribbling tennis balls around the hall with hockey sticks, to practice close ball control, we moved straight in to team games using the same teams as in the football. It was a great end to a wonderful session
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At the end of the session the coaches awarded the Star of the Week award to Alexander  - vert well done for showing great energy and enthusiasm throughout the session.

Join us again next Saturday for our last session before we break for the school summer holidays - see you then!

Hi All,
It was great to be back at Epping Forest Sportability Club on Saturday - our first meeting since 14th March 2020!
We were operating under slightly different rules in that we had to contain ourselves to the hall and playground but we slipped back in to the old routine quickly and had a fantastic session. 
We had a good number of the kids back along with a couple of new faces which is always good to see. 
Ray, Alan and Ollie led the session which was predominately Basketball related on the playground. We were going to switch to football after the mid-session break but the rain started and put an end to that. So we played some short sided games of Basketball, using the hoops, in the hall.
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The team still managed to present the Star of the Week award and for this first week back it was given to Davina. She showed great energy and enthusiasm throughout the session.
It is worth mentioning that all the kids did really well. It must have been a bit strange to be back after all this time and the circumstances were slightly different (coaches wearing masks etc). We look forward to another great session next Saturday  - see you then!!

Hi All
I am very pleased to announce that Sportability Club will be starting up again from Saturday 3rd July at the usual time of 10:00 to 13:00. 
There will be some changes so that we comply fully with all the Covid guidelines laid down. An email has been sent to all parents and carers that we have email addresses for but if you need more details please contact us at EFSC@hotmail.co.uk

We look forward to seeing you all again on the 3rd July - if we do not recognise you straight away it is because we have not seen you all for sooooo long and you have all probably grown!

See you then!