Eastfield-hosted camp a success, despite the heat

by Bill Gates

    The English may have been mortified by their national team’s 1-1 tie with the United States in the just-completed World Cup, but give them credit: they apparently don’t hold grudges.
   

A group of Englishmen — and one Scotsman — spent a week in Dundalk recently helping make American soccer players better.
    “Soccer is the largest sport in the United States, but, as far as taking it seriously, that’s another concern,” said Challenger soccer camp director Andy Wianni of London. “Kids here sometimes have no clue as to what’s going on in the main soccer world.”
    So the camp, in addition to teaching soccer skills, also focuses on international soccer culture and what Wianni calls “core values.”
    “We talk to the kids about understanding sportsmanship, leadership, integrity, respect and responsibility,” Wianni said. “We stress that they have to get their studies done first, get their chores done.”
    These values are even printed on the back of the camp t-shirts.
    Challenger Sports has been running soccer camps taught by British coaches since 1985. This is the second straight year a camp has been hosted by the Dundalk-Eastfield Recreation Council.
    The camp was held July 5-11 on the field behind the North Point Government Center.
    Eighty-seven children attended this year’s camp, up from 57 last summer.
    Impressive, considering the camp was held during a week that featured three straight days of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.
    “Only one child got sick, because she wasn’t drinking enough water,” Dundalk-Eastfield Camp Coordinator Chris Baxter said. “But everyone that signed up attended the camp.
    “[The week before,] temperatures were around 70, 80 degrees. So I just knew this week would be really hot,” Baxter quipped.
    To deal with the heat, Eastfield set up canopies around the field for shade and made sure the kids drank plenty of water and Gatorade.
    Next year, the camp might be moved back to June in an attempt to dodge the hot weather.
    Despite — or maybe because of — being from a country known to be cold and damp, the camp coaches didn’t seem to mind the heat.
    “I love the weather,” said 20-year-old Craig “Rocket” McConnell of Glasgow, Scotland. “Back home, it’s 75 degrees and wet. Here, it’s sunny, I can even get a tan.”
    This camp featured eight British coaches (Challenger camps aim for a 15:1 campers-to-coaches ratio).
    In addition to Wianni and McConnell, the coaches were Dan Buehler, 22, of Manchester; Colin Morrow, 18, of Liverpool; Natalie O’Connor, 20, of London; Rob Cross, 21, of Bristol; Andy Gaertner, 39, of Leeds; and Lorna Smith, 18, of London.
    In all, Challenger Sports brings 800 British coaches to the USA to operate its camps, selected from a pool of over 1,000 candidates.
    When Wianni first started working for Challenger Sports 13 years ago, it only needed 80 coaches.
    “Now, [Challenger camps] coach 110,000 kids  in 2,500 camps this summer,” Wianni said. “It’s a big logistical nightmare at times.”
    The camps run from June through August. Wianni arrived in the United States on June 15 and will return home on August 15 after overseeing 11 different camps.
    After the Eastfield camp ended on July 11, Wianni was at a camp in Rhode Island the next day.
    “Home,” for Wianni, is Rome, where he teaches English. A former semi-pro player in England, he coached soccer teams until joining Challenger Sports to operate camps.
    American players, Wianni said, “need to learn and appreciate soccer as a big team game. Not that all sports aren’t, but the team element in soccer requires a different skill set, and there’s a huge disparity.”
    The camp stresses that passing is a vital part of the game, as important as shooting.
    The campers are separated into teams representing different countries: England, Argentina, Italy, France, Brazil, Spain, Germany and Scotland.
    During the weeklong “World Cup” tournament that culminated with Argentina defeating England in the championship game,  team success is graded by more than just performance on the pitch.
    The players earned points for team wins, scoring goals, individual displays of skill, sportsmanship and identifying with their team’s “country” by wearing its colors, displaying its flag and learning facts about the country.
    In fact, one of the decisive factors in the championship game was the number of flags displayed by the team representing Argentina.
    “We want to see these kids get to experience what soccer is like in Europe,” Wianni said.
    Skillwise, the coaches watch to see if the campers are using what they’re being taught.
    Young American players tend to have “this beehive thing: they all gather around the ball,” Wianni said. “We look for kids who appreciate ‘space’: looking for space, finding space, passing the ball into space.
    “We keep repeating that they need to spread out, spread out.”
    Baxter feels the camp does have an impact on local soccer players.
    “Last year, after they attended the camp, I saw a tremendous improvement in my under-8 team’s ball skills,” Baxter said. “The Challenger coaches do it the right way: train hard, go have fun, then train hard some more.”
    Eastfield hosted the Challenger camp last year after the Back River program that was supposed to have the camp folded.
    This was the first year of a three-year contract Eastfield signed with Challenger Sports.
    “My goal is to make this bigger and have a place for beginning soccer players who need advanced training,” Baxter said. “This isn’t just to help Eastfield. We want kids in the entire southeast area to get better.”
    Baxter credited the Dundalk-Eastfield Recreation Council, particularly John Brummet, with helping to operate the camp.
    The Wise Avenue Volunteer Fire Department even lent a hand, sending a truck to cool down the campers with sprays of water on the last day.
    Wianni, who got his cooling off courtesy of a cooler filled with water and several mischievous female campers, hopes the camps help change the way soccer is perceived in America by the mainstream.
    “People here see soccer as dull and boring,” Wianni said. “Americans don’t get the plays, don’t get the discipline of it. That’s why it can seem dull and boring, and I can get that.