Sports and more

Our kids being the keen sportspeople they are, we had to find athletic activities for them to do while away from home. In fact their trainers had all told them that they had to do circuits and God knows what else, so we figured this would be much easier if carried out institutionally, and it would also provide another opportunity for meeting kids and socialising.
So, just as in the case of the schools, we did a little research and identified the people who would helps us in this endeavour. Since roller hockey is such an acquired and selective sport, and we did not bring kit or had any plans to acquire it here, we figured soccer would be the simplest option. And we were not disappointed. Anabel got a team almost immediately (girls' soccer is very big here) but we were a bit worried because it took a bit of time for our contact to get back to us on a team for Olly. We had sent them some of the Instagram videos I spent last year making whenever I went to see a match that Olly played, but did not hear anything until we got to Davis and reminded them of our interest. And then we had some details as to how to proceed. We first had to enrol them on a web site, (including details such as shorts size!) and pay a nominal fee for extra insurance. They told us Olly would train on Sunday afternoon and Tuesday evening and Anabel on Sunday evening in a place called Playfield Park, just outside Davis.

So, on Saturday, after all-you-can-eat-pancakes at IHOP, we took a walk down to the park to see what it was like. Even though this is the city of bicycles (albeit almost exclusively on campus), walking is not the done thing beyond the few blocks that make the down town, so we were a pretty strange sight walking along to get to these places. The other strange thing would be to find the beautiful playing fields totally empty. After a week of rain and clouds, this was the first day of bright sunshine, it was Saturday, kids had finished the first week of school after the break, and yet the place was completely empty. There were no kids playing soccer, or baseball; no adults sitting around watching them; no younger kids playing in the climbing frames; not evern cars in the parking lot. We almost started wondering if there'd be an alien invasion that had made everyone disappear!

Olly had expected to find a bunch of kids to play football with, so he had taken his newly acquired Spurs ball. Seeing as he couldn't very well play with invisible kids, he had to make do with Ray and Anabel. 

This didn't last very long:

On Sunday we returned at the time we were told training would be, and we were relieved to see the aliens had returned their experimental subjects. We were there early and there were few kids but, little more started arriving. In any case, the premises and the space would have been sufficient for twice or three times as many! Each pair of trainers had about a dozen kids to train and they came equipped with two dozen balls, and enough training bibs for all kids to wear them, thus having two colours on the pitch (as opposed to half of them wearing them).
Here are some of the things they did during the training session (can't possibly assess the quality or level of the activity or the performances, as you can imagine!).

And here are some photos and videos of a match they played.


By the way, if you think Olly is tiny, he is a bit, but here he is playing with kids who are two years older than him. They put him in that team so that he would have some challenge. Some of the kids are as tall as an adult!
Here is a photo the team:

Also, we have footage and photos of Olly's training because I was there. Ray went with Anabel and didn't feel comfortable taking pictures, so he didn't. So, we'll have to wait until I go for those, I guess.