Riverview Sports

This week for student teaching I attended St.Ignatius Riverview College on a Thursday versus my usual Friday. What I did not know was that Thursday was sports day for the fifth and sixth grade. When I arrived, all of the boys were wearing their sports warm-ups instead of their usual uniform. After lunch, all of the boys went to sports practice instead of having class for the rest of the day. This is completely different from anything I have seen in the US. While many schools put strong value on their sports programs in the US, none would allow sports time to take away from academic time. I found it very interesting that every single on of the boys at the school had to play a sport. This season, they got to chose from soccer, rugby, or AFL. Within these sports, they had an A, B, and C team for both the eleven year olds and the twelve year olds. When it was time for sports, coaches came from all over the school. I was surprised to see all of the teachers out on the field because they did not strike me as sports people but they were just as involved as anyone else. The practice ran for about two hours and the boys seemed to really enjoy themselves. I was very pleased to see how much of good sports they were to each other and that I did not witness any fighting. It was clear to me that Riverview must really stress good sportsmanship amongst the boys. The idea of Thursday sports practice is so that the fifth and sixth grade boys do not have to get home late during the week but will still be prepared for Saturday's sports games.

Sydney Swans AFL Game

This weekend I attended the Sydney Swans AFL game at the Sydney Cricket Ground. I was very impressed by the oval stadium and how full it was in comparison to the Rugby League game that I had attended. Everyone was dressed in their red and had their signs out! The game was played on an oval field and there were four posts on each side for the goals. I found the rules difficult to follow, honestly it seemed like anything goes! I was impressed by the passing skills because the players moved the ball along extremely quickly. I also thought it was interesting that they could bounce the ball on the ground after taking a few steps because that was different from any other field sport I have experienced. The players were extremely athletic looking and very very fast. I was a little confused about when the players could kick for a goal but it seems like they can choose once they catch it whether they want to keep the ball moving or stop the play to kick. The score was much higher than I had expected and there was a lot of scoring that occurred throughout the game. The fans were all pretty into the game and every time the Swans scored they all stood up and cheered and waved their flags. It was a very fun environment!

Youth Netball

On Saturday morning I was also able to attend a girl's netball game. The girls that I was watching were twelve years old and the teams they were members of were club teams. Coming from playing basketball all my life, I found netball to be very slow moving. In many ways it was similar to basketball but the main differences were that you cannot dribble the ball, as soon as you catch it you choose a pivot foot and cannot move, there is no backboard, and you have to stay an arms length away from the person with the ball. I think if I tried to play I would be thrown out for being too aggressive! While there is strategy to passing in the game, I felt like there was not much room to really display much skill in the game. I was also surprised by how often the ball went into the hoop when the girls shot the ball. This meant there was little rebounding that occurred which I would think must be very boring for the girls who were playing goal defender. While it seemed like the girls were enjoying themselves, it did not seem like they were very competitive about the game. Similar to the rugby game, the parents seemed to be enjoying themselves socializing on the side and from my experience they were only yelling out words of encouragement.

Junior Rugby at Nagel Park

This weekend I attended a junior rugby sporting event. The games were held at Nagel Park in Maroubra and occur every Saturday. The game I was watching was all boys ages seven and eight. The coaches of each of the teams along with one referee were on the field throughout the whole game to keep the game moving. The whole time I was watching I was nervous because the boys wear no pads! I couldn't believe how hard they were bringing each other to the ground without having any padding on. Even more surprising was that I did not see anyone get hurt the whole time I was watching. The boys had very impressive footwork and were extremely fast. They were not afraid at all to tackle each other or to be tackled themselves. The facility reminded me a lot of youth soccer back in the US. There was about four fields all next to each other with tons of children running around everywhere. The parents and siblings of the players were all lined up along the sidelines and all of the kids were playing around while they did not have a game. What was unlike the US was the freedom that the kids had. There were so many kids running around and playing so rough that I kept thinking I was seeing kids get hurt but they just popped right up. I think in the US the parent are more paranoid and would be watching the kids more instead of just letting them go. It seemed like the parents were enjoying themselves socializing with each other while the boys were playing. Overall, there was a strong community feel at the event and it was a lot of fun!

Lifeguard Training

While on holiday, I was traveling in Airlie beach. On Saturday morning I was relaxing by the lagoon when a large group of children and lifeguards came. The parents were standing around so I went over to inquire about what was going on. The mother I spoke to had two daughters in the program. She explained to me that this was a public program and was very cheap compared to the YMCA prices that she had previously paid. The program was a training program for water safety starting at age eight. Unlike the nippers, it was not for a competition but rather just for preparing to be safe in the water and likely become lifeguards. She said that the only real requirement to be able to join is that the children have to be able to swim. One of the women who was running the program was actually the physical education teacher and her daughter's school so she said it was a very popular community thing. The kind of activities I observed them doing was practicing the correct way to enter the water to save someone, how to hold someone's body if you have to bring them in, and how to use a noodle to help someone float above the water. The children learned these skills very quickly and it was evident that they were all pretty strong swimmers. It is very interesting to me how popular water training is. While most people in the US learn to swim, there are far less that go on to become lifeguards. In Australia, it seems like an extremely high percentage of people get lifeguard certified.

Soccer

During the holiday week for the primary schools in Sydney, there were a lot of camps being held at the University of Sydney. During a break I had one afternoon, I sat and observed a soccer camp. I was immediately brought back to my childhood soccer camps. The whole field was set up with stations of different drills for the kids to participate in. I was surprised by the amount of children that were at the camp because camp is not something many people would do in the US with only a week break. After the camp was over, I went over and talked to a few of the parents. One of the mothers told me that going to a sport camp over break is very popular. She said that her children had to chose between soccer and tennis camp because they really wanted to do both. She also told me that many of the children's friends were also in the camp so they were very excited to be there and it made her life easier while they had time off of school. When the kids came to her, they had big smiles on their faces and said they had a great time. Where many of the sporting experiences I have had have been very different than my experiences in the US, this youth soccer camp was very similar to any camp in the US.

Surfing

You cannot come to Australia and not try the sport of surfing! I did my first surfing lesson at Manly Beach with my study abroad program. We starting with boogie boarding which I have been doing since I was a little kid in the US. However, I found the boogie boarding much harder in Australia. First of all, the waves were pretty rough which is always a challenge. The hardest part was that the boogie boards had no string to attach to your wrist so you really have to hold on to the board. There were many occasions where I was not able to do this and my boogie board went flying. I was able to catch a lot of waves though so it was a lot of fun and a good warm up for surfing.

The first thing the instructors had us do was practicing getting up on our boards on the sand. I had difficulty on the land popping straight up and instead kept pushing myself up and then taking a step. It definitely required more upper body strength than I had anticipated. Eventually I got the hang of it and was ready to get into the water. I was lucky to have an instructor right by me when I was in the water because he had me lay on the board and helped me to time the waves. I was able to get up five times! I stayed closer to the shore so that I could catch smaller waves but I was still happy to be able to get up. It was a lot of fun to be able to ride the waves all the way in. Overall, the sport required a lot of patients and the timing of getting on the board was crucial. It amazes me the type of waves really surfers can get up on!