“This stuff is important for these guys to known when they’re young”
Our first mentoring session was to be aligned with the club coaching at Hammanskraal. We weren’t entirely sure how this was going to map out, we knew we wanted to give the coaches the opportunity to try design some new games based on the tools we had developed in the workshop, and we knew that there were going to be players around who would be expecting their normal cricket session, so it was a case of adapting and adjusting based on what met us there.
An unexpected schools game taking over the majority of the pitch limited us to the boundary edge and nets, but this didn’t prove too much of a limitation – we were straight into action planning a warm-up using the headline S-K-A cards. We’ll be collecting all these games as they’re developed and digitising them into a new set of CWB-style coaching cards; here’s a look at the games that we kicked off with today:
Next up, a game practicing hitting the ball through the covers, with targets marked by means of action on HIV; condoms, ARVs, male circumcision and PrEP. A quick question every time a player successfully hits a target – explain what it is that you just hit? And then the next player up to the stumps ready to bat.
A couple of bowling sessions: screening our actions to see if we are front on, side on or mixed and planning how we are going to act on that information, target bowling aiming for different lengths marked by the S-K-A cards, and a net practice which used the myths/fact about HIV cards to indicate where players were to shout YES and run with their partner or shout NO and not run, depending on the answer to the question on the cards. The group playing this drill ranged from ages 11-13, and it was great to see both a stage appropriate practice as well as some good discussions about the questions listed on the cards. At least one player went away better informed about mother to child transmission of HIV, and despite a few giggles on questions about condoms the respect these players had for their coaches shone through as they took the brief but effective question and answer sessions seriously.
We has a chat about the ages that we could deliver this messaging with following the session – the older players were tied up in the school game so the players we were working with were younger than those we might have otherwise planned for – and it was helpful to reflect on the value of empowering these younger players with the basic information, to set the foundations to grow from as they grow older and hopefully continue to stay involved in cricket and can start to apply this information to their own lives.
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