Thursday, May 5, 2016

Another BEAUTIFUL Day for American Football in Sweden


Thursday, Cinco de Mayo, 2016:

VIVA MEXICO!!!

As stated on this blog yesterday, today was Ascension Thursday and a National Holiday in Sweden. Many Swedes will take Friday off as well to enjoy a nice four day weekend.

For YOUR Wäsby Warriors,
this will be a four day Opportunity!

Today we would meet on our game field with the U15 team for three and a half hours of practice and two thirty minute meetings.

I left Icelandia II about an hour before the start of practice because I figured that there would be less busses running due to the holiday and I was correct.

I had about a 15 minute wait for the bus that would bring me closest to the field. After about five minutes, a black car pulled up to my bus stop with two men in the front seats. The driver asked me if I was the American coach with the Wäsby Warriors.

I thought that they must be from Interpol and that my luck in EuroBall had finally run out.

The driver introduced himself as Fredrik and that his passenger was his Father. Fredrik is a member of the Board of Directors with the nearby Arlanda Jets who play in the Super Series, Sweden's best American football league.

It turns out that he is a blog follower from back in the days when I coached the Hassleholm Hurricanes in Skåne, the southernmost region of Sweden back in 2010. From those blogging days he recognized me sitting on the bus stop bench and then proceeded to drive me to our practice.

Crazy world this EuroBall!

The woods behind our Game Field

Mini-Gardens near our game field

People either own or rent these spaces
long term to use for vegetable gardening

Freshly turned earth

Some apartment dwellers may
use these plots as their backyards

Coach Thomas Andersson
greeting the U15 kids

Only 15 of our 29 U15 players made it to practice today. I think that this was predictable given the National Holiday

Stretching Exercises
to start the day

Pass Catching Progression

As you probably know, most popular European sports do not involve throwing or catching balls with your hands. Thus players are paired up daily to go through a simple but necessary series of ball catching drills to help them understand that "the ball is my friend."

Good idea.

At the end of the day we set up
a half line drill to work on
our Mid-Line Option

The players who came to practice worked hard, were coachable and definitely got better today.

On Friday, we are at it again!

The U15 team will practice twice for two hours each time.

The U13 squad will practice once for two hours as well.

The U11 minions will practice for one hour.

All three teams will also play a fun series of touch football games for an hour.

We start at 10:00 a.m. and will finish at 7:00 p.m.

A long day to be sure but worth it!

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