It's 2018 and We are Back at EF Sportability Club

Firstly a Happy New Year to all our members, their families and all our followers!
​It was great to be back at Sportability Club at Oak View School last Saturday as we eased our way in to the new year. It was a relatively quiet week in terms of numbers but we had a great session which was mainly focused around badminton.
As you can see in the photos below we started with some warm up games to get the legs going and the bodies warmed up, all led by coach Ray. This consisted of some games of "What's the time Mr Wolf?" where the players try to creep up on the wolf while their back is turned. They call out "What's the time Mr Wolf?" and if he answers 10 o'clock then you have to move 10 steps but when he calls out "dinner time" he turns and tries to catch you before you get back  to safe ground. These games were followed some games of Rob the Nest where each team try to gain as many bean bags as possible by robbing other team's bags from their nests (hoops in our case).

With all the warm up games done and dusted and after a quick drink it was then on to our main sport of Badminton. We rigged up all the nets so we had one big net along the middle of the hall then the members paired up. Generally we tried to put pairs together of a similar ability but the members were free to switch partners if they wished too. The kids worked on serving over the net to their partner, returning the shuttle cock back and then on to building up a rally if they could. The longer the rally the more satisfying it gets! Some kids just love to play the game where as others get a little competitive and want to play for points so that they can win their match ups.

With the kids having so much fun playing badminton they almost forgot to stop for a break. It was nearly midday when they eventually stopped to grab a drink and eat their snacks. We still had time to play a couple of games of Boccia. The first was target Boccia where we use a big round mat with different coloured rings as the target. Each ring is worth a different value with the outside ring being the lowest value up to the bulls eye in the middle. The group split in to two teams with the Red team at one end of the hall and the Blues at the other. Each player had a ball and took it in turns to get as close to the bulls eye as possible. At the end when everyone had taken their turns the referees used all their fingers and toes to add up the totals and work out which team was the winner.
The second game of Boccia was classical Boccia using a white Jack ball much  like crown green bowling. The Jack was thrown in to the centre of the hall and each player tries to get as close as possible to it. It is a team game so if your opposing team manage to get a ball right up close to the Jack you could use one of your teams to try and blast it out of the way, for example. Once everyone had taken their turn points are awarded to the team with the ball(s) closest to the Jack. If your team had two, three or even four balls nearer to the Jack than the first of the opposing team then you would get that many points. After a few games (ends) the team with the most points is declared the winner! 

Our Star of the Week was Hal, pictured here with coach Ray, Anand and Callum. He is happy honest! Just very serious when it comes to photos

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