A HUGE weekend coming up!

This week is massive for the Ubuntu Football Academy.  After about 8 weeks of training together we are going to be playing in a very competitive U13 tournament.  We have been winning all of our friendlies handily the last couple of weeks.  This tournament is going to be a huge opportunity for us to play against MUCH better competition.  It also will allow us to play as many as 5 matches in 2 days.
The tournament consists of 24 teams that represent the best clubs in Cape Town and the surrounding area.  All of the established academies in the area will have teams there.  The "best" part is that our first game is against Ajax Cape Town, the junior squad of the most successful professional team in the city.  Right now the senior team is in 1st Place of the PSL, our professional league.  Basically it would be like your new AAU basketball team playing against the Chicago Bulls' U13 team.  Or your football team playing against the junior team of the New England Patriots.  But it's a great opportunity for us to measure ourselves against other good teams/players.  And, WHEN we beat them it will create quite a stir!  :)
We play two group games on Saturday, the one against Ajax CT and another club called Ken Park.  From those results you are placed into a knockout group of 8 for the Sunday games.  So, Sunday could be 1 game or 3.  We're planning on 3!
We really wanted this weekend to be special so we're taking the boys away on a retreat for the weekend.  We'll be staying at a camp nearby called Gordon's.  It would be like using a camp setting like Sea Gull to host your team for the weekend.  The boys are really excited about the time together and the tournament.
Please join us in praying for the weekend.  Pray that the boys will bond well and that deep chemistry will start to grow.  Pray that we would stay safe and avoid injuries.  And pray that our influence, mentoring, and discipleship would also take a big jump forward with all this time together.

Excited,
Casey

I Never Imagined

I could have never dreamed or imagined the things that we would come up against as we have started this Academy.  These kids bring the most surprising struggles to the table.
For the last couple of weeks we've been struggling with one of the boys, Rory.  He just doesn't want to train as much as we require.  The problem is really that he wants to hang out with his little girlfriend.  Really?  At 12 years old you want to waste time with girls!?!?  I had to think back to when I was 12, and remembered that I also had "girlfriends" but in suburban America that's all a big joke.  You see each other at school and you're lucky if your Mom will take you to the movies together on Friday night.  But in the communities that the boys are coming from they can walk to each other's houses, so it's actually quite a temptation.  And because sexuality is such a perverse thing here it's possible that they are already considering having sex.  Rory missed all 3 practices last week (he was lucky we already were giving them 1 day off or he would have missed all 4) and has missed 6 of 11.  We had a heart to heart with him during school on Thursday and he STILL didn't come to training that night.  On Saturday Mike & I tried pursuing him and not letting him waste this opportunity.  We scheduled to take him to lunch, but then he wasn't at home.  We tracked him to Fish Hoek at which point we walked the streets and the beach looking for him.  I NEVER imagined that this is what I'd be doing!  We never found him, but did eventually chat to his mom for a few minutes.  Finally on Monday we wrangled him into a lunch meeting and got him to commit to the next 2 weeks (leading up to a big tournament we are playing in) before he gives up.  Hopefully he'll get sucked in by that.
We've also been dealing with Josh, who I wrote about a few posts back.  Josh comes from such a rough background and he's quite rough around the edges.  That bit of anger actually helps make him a great player, but it often gets misplaced.  On Sunday we had a friendly and he arrived grumpy, everything was frustrating him.  Towards the end of the game he made a bad play which led to him passing the ball out of bounds, he then shouted at the player he was trying to pass to, attempting to shift the blame.  That kid shouted back and Josh continued shouting. (Mind you, all of this is happening in Afrikaans, so I have no idea what they're saying, I just know it's not nice!)  Because Josh wouldn't stop I pulled him off the field.  He has this problem from time to time and we're trying to slowly work it out of him.  Being positive is one of the main values of our culture and we talk about how we never scream negative things at each other.  Well, me pulling him off just sent him over the edge.  He wouldn't calm down and couldn't talk with me.  The game ended about that time so everybody started changing.  We were planning to take the team to the beach for a little team bonding, but when we prepared to leave we realized Josh had left on his own.  His house is at least 10 miles away, so I'm not sure what his plan was, but he just doesn't have the skills to deal with his anger.  Eventually, Mike caught up with him, convinced him to get in the car, and the longer the time went on the beach the more he softened.
Again, I never imagined dealing with this stuff.  How do you handle this?  You can't deal with these situations the same way you would in the States.  The environments, cultures, and experiences are so different.  I don't know what kind of trauma Josh has experienced that has caused him to respond in these ways.  The reality is that we WILL NOT give up on these boys easily.  Most people in their lives give up on them when they mess up like this, but that doesn't feel like the picture Jesus drew for us with his life.  He constantly pursues us, even when we hash things up, so we'll keep chasing these kids until they decide they truly don't want it anymore.  But please pray for us!  We need grace, wisdom, patience, and discernment!

Casey

Updates

I'm late reporting on last week's friendly.  These friendly matches are us now playing as a Fish Hoek AFC club.

Last weekend we played Wynberg St. John's and defeated them 5-0.  The B Side (2nd team, which includes some Academy kids) won 9-1!  So that was a great start.  We heard that our opponent is in the league above us, Super League, while we are in Premier League.  One of our goals for the year is to get promoted to Super League.  We started a bit slow, but got going eventually and scored a few really nice, attractive goals.  And you always love shutting out the other team.
Tomorrow morning we play a friendly against Meadow Ridge.  They are in our same league and probably the closest to us geographically.  I'm looking forward to us playing again and learning more about our team.  I'll give you the update this time much quicker.

Thanks,
Casey

2nd Friendly

The Football Academy had its second friendly game on Wednesday against the Old Mutual Academy.  This is an actual proper academy and quite an organized setup.  Old Mutual is a financial services and insurance company based here in Cape Town.  Imagine if State Farm or American Express hosted an Academy in Raleigh, that's what this is like.  They have beautiful fields built onto their huge campus in the Pinelands area of Cape Town.
When we first arrived I think our boys were quite intimidated, and it showed as we started the game.  Their boys have been for a few years and are all true U13s (ours are 1/2 U13 & 1/2 U12), so they were a bit bigger than us.  We played so nervously and passively at the beginning and they jumped out to a 2-0 and 3-1 lead.  At halftime we talked about us calming down and relaxing and trying to keep the ball more.  In the 2nd half the boys played totally different.  They played with confidence and passion!  They got a penalty kick that we converted to cut the lead to 3-2.  Then, a few minutes later we got another penalty.  But this time Josh wanted to take it and he kicked it over!  Oh no, there goes our chance, but actually just a few minutes later we scored our 3rd to tie the score!  So, we ended the game tied at 3.
The point of the friendlies are to play together, try new things, and measure yourself against another opponent.  It's really not about the result.  But the boys were quite proud of themselves!  For our young organization it really was quite a neat moment.  Old Mutual has big resources and has been around for 10 years.  They have an easier time attracting players at this point.  But I think we have shown that in less than 4 weeks we are starting to develop something special.  My hope is that the boys will get a confidence boost out of this to realize that they can play with anybody and have the ability to accomplish their goals.  But I'm also hoping that it will motivate them to work EVEN harder to get there.
Tomorrow we have our first friendly as a Fish Hoek club.  Some of our boys will actually play with the B side so that they can play the whole game.  Development is the priority!!

Cheers,
Casey