Staff Reporter
Windhoek-The NFA Galz & Goals programme, with support from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), trained 14 girls’ football coaches on how to enhance their players’ life skills through football training at the NFA Girls Centre on in Windhoek earlier this month.
NFA Galz & Goals provides life skills training for coaches as a key component of the programme. Lydia Hatzenberg, the regional coordinator of the Windhoek Galz & Goals League and co-facilitator of the Football 4 Life training explains:
“It is important to train our coaches in life skills coaching, as they work with our young girls and shape them into future national players, role models and decent citizens of our country.”
Football in itself is a game where the players naturally improve their life skills, such as teamwork, communication skills, focus, determination and much more.
Football 4 Life aims to further teach and develop life skills in the young players through age appropriate activities and conversations with their teammates and coach, connecting their experiences on the field with real life situations.
Two of the coaches that were trained last weekend are coaching Namibia Premier League teams as well as youth teams.
“It is wonderful to see that coaches are committed to developing the youth. The young girls and boys might one day make us proud in the national colours,” says Jackie Gertze, the National Manager of the NFA Galz & Goals programme.
For most of the participating coaches, it was their first time to learn how to integrate life skills coaching into their football training sessions and they displayed great interest and understanding of the concept.