Soccer for Education and Cultural Exchange

After 48 hours of wait, flights cancellation and rerouting Play Soccer teams from Ghana and Senegal finally arrived in Athens on Sunday June 19th at 4 a.m. Despite the fatigue, Senegal and Ghana teams were up early Sunday morning along with the South Africans to start the program as scheduled.
The video above gives a condensed illustration of the activities all the volunteer coaches were engaged in the first 2 days of training. On the field they rapidly connected with the young coaches from Athens and all the young Athenians participating in the camp.
If you are on facebook you can join Play Soccer – Ohio University Partnership group to see more pictures and comments.

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Team South Africa taking pictures with the Ohio University Bobcat.  We spent about 1 hour talking about their expectations and thoughts on being in America.  After answering questions the members of the Ohio grant team (Sheri, Dan, Tori, and Cassidy) were entertained with singing games.  We then went to lunch at Chipotle before spending the afternoon learning how to use email, social media and video cameras.

Team Ghana and Senegal are scheduled to arrive late tonight or early tomorrow morning.  We look forward to working with all the coaches tomorrow.

- Sheri

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Cassidy, Tori and Dan hanging outside the OU Inn waiting for instructions.  Unfortunately, today’s schedule has to be modified because the coaches from Ghana and Senegal are stuck at JFK in New York.  The coaches from South Africa were cheerful this morning and we look forward to a fun day.  We are going to conduct a focus group on coaching education, take a campus tour, learn about technology and relax.  We hope to see our delayed coaching friends tonight.  – Sheri

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via Go Bus

Grant team members, Dan Adams and Tori Botticelli, arrive in Athens around 4:30 pm with the coaches from South Africa.  The group traveled to Athens via GoBus from the Columbus International Airport.  Although the group was tired, smiles were on their faces.  Can you find the vuvuzela?

-Sheri

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photos can be found in the Media button to the left.

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A sick feeling of missing the 8am departure time for Weilers Farm rudely woke me from a deep sleep at 5:23 am.  To my surprise the sun rises early as the sky was blue and sunny so early in the morning.  Since then, the days activities have not stopped.   In short (as I am paying for this online time), the OU-Play Soccer team visited Weliers Farm to deliver Day 1 of our coaching curriculum and cultural exchange.  While there were a few kinks, like a delay in start time, the experience was great.  The coaches are so willing to learn and the children are so eager to play. I am to exhausted to type coherently, thus I will leave you with a few photos.

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