The children of Oxbow have been receiving high-level soccer training at the town’s Prairie Horizons School this past week by a dedicated team of Challenger British Soccer Camp instructors.
Kerry Vowles, 24, and Chris Skipworth, 20, have been leading 15 mostly eight-to-10-year-old athletes through a week-long camp focused on developing skills, speed and confidence. The British instructors are on their last leg of a Canada-wide tour that has hundreds of United Kingdom soccer coaches cross the Great White North in an attempt to teach the beautiful game to this nation’s children.
“I’ve been all across Canada,” said Skipworth, who is entering his final year of studies in sport coaching at Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, U.K., this fall. “I started off in Nova Scotia with Kennetcook, Halifax and Dartmouth. I ended up being flown over to Vancouver and Vancouver Island. I did a couple towns over there and then been lucky enough to be coaching with Kerry for the past two weeks.”
Vowles, a sports educational teacher in Britain, began her third year as a Challenger British Soccer Camp instructor in Toronto before she travelled to Balgonie, Edmonton, Regina and finally Oxbow.
“It’s a lot of travelling sometimes, so you do get tired,” said Vowles, who like Skipworth was chosen as a coach through a vigorous assessment process including a formal interview and practical coaching setting to determine their abilities. “But the kids have such good manners. Like they are amazing (with) their behaviour and the people are so generous too.”
Stacy Beriault, organizer of the Challenger British Soccer Camp in Oxbow, said this is the fourth camp in the past five years that they’ve hosted in an effort to get more kids involved in the sport and learning a few skills that otherwise would be out of their reach. She said the camp, which is divided into a half-day and a full-day curriculum, focuses on foot skills, game drills and fun scrimmages to keep the kids busy and entertained.
“We started (Oxbow Youth Soccer) about five years ago, the same time the camps started, and it’s going good” said Beriault, noting their teams will begin play in a new Southeast Saskatchewan Soccer League fall program next month. “It’s more and more support. It’s a great program. It’s cheap to be in the league and you only really need shin pads and you don’t really need any other equipment, so it’s well received for anybody to join and come down. They like it. We have usually a couple of teams per each age group just from Oxbow, so there are a lot of kids that come.”
Skipworth and Vowles will be heading home after this week, but both coaches noted their trip across Canada this summer never presented a dull moment. Skipworth said the camps have shown him the skill-level of soccer players in this country is better than what he was expecting and the chance to teach new skills to these young players is something he’ll never forget.
“It’s the best summer of my life,” said Skipworth. “Just having the opportunity to go around and explore a different country, learn stuff about the cultures, meet different people and hopefully inspire other people to continue practising and playing soccer.”
