This weeks blog is brought to you by PP-NI local sessional coach, Abbie Mahood. She recently spent 2 weeks interning with PP-NI to gaining work experience for her degree in Sport Fitness and Coaching.
Coach Abbie in the centre
My time with PeacePlayers was extremely enjoyable. Over my 2 weeks I got to see how extremely hard everyone works both inside and outside of the office. Whilst outside the office I got experience using different coaching techniques as well as getting to work with the different schools, each with children from a variety of backgrounds! Coaching in different areas showed me the importance of PeacePlayers. The coaches are enthusiastic and help children create friendships with people they might never have met if it weren’t for those coaches and PeacePlayers. My favourite part of coaching is definitely coming up with a team cheer. I try my best to get everyone to help create this so it can often turn into a massive, idiotically funny dance or scream, which is great! My inner child comes out a lot when doing activities like this. My favourite cheer has to be with the Pancake Players and Bacon Ballers; the kids couldn’t decide between the two so we went with both, though it was too long to chant so in the end we chanted P.P.A.B.B or shouted PPABB at random times when making our way to our next rotation!
The rest of my time with PeacePlayers was spent editing photos I had taken the previous week during a super twinning or completing tasks such as sourcing information. I enjoyed this as I was able to get to know the more seasoned coaches better. I also got to work at my own pace which was great, I can often get flustered when working on written projects because I’m a perfectionist, it’s definitely a flaw as i can often take longer than I should when doing a minor task.
Overall my time at peaceplayers was amazing! The staff were extremely helpful and kind, and the work that is done there is extremely important. It showed me that sport doesn’t just have to be used as a way of staying active but it can also act as a tool to teach values and a way to bridge divides within communities.
Abigail Mahood
Check out a few of the photos she took from said Super Twinning:
