By Neto Baptiste
There is room for more than 100 young footballers in this year’s Grays Green X-Mas Soccer Camp being put on by a number of clubs and other bodies in the St John’s Rural West community, starting Sunday.
This is according to a member of the organising team and former national football coach, Micah Samuel, who said they will target 120 participants, inclusive of boys and girls, for the one-week camp which is partly geared towards identifying talent at an early age.
“It’s basically to get people more interested in playing football in the area because for the last 13 or so years, we’ve been suffering in terms of Empire and down in Five Islands. Hoppers seems to be the lucky club because every child being born down there happens to be male while, in Grays Farm and Five Islands, it seems to be females. So, we’re hoping to put on this camp from the 12th to the 17th of December,” he said.
The camp, which will cater for youths in 7-17 age group, is a collaboration between the Empire Football Club, Greenbay Hoppers Football Club, Five Islands Football Club and the King George V Restoration Society.
Samuel said a number of noteworthy coaches will be assisting the effort.
“We have included our overseas coach, Conrad ‘Boast’ Whyte, who is going to join us and he will be working with our advanced group. Some of the coaches that are going to be involved include George ‘Sowa’ Dublin; he is the one who did the content as it relates to the material that the coaches will be utlising. We have Vincent ‘Nabu’ Samuel, George ‘Cajawawa’ Warner, Justin ‘Trini’ Pereira, Lindon ‘Luda’ Lawrence and, luckily, we were able to get Karen Warner on board because this camp will be inclusive for boys and girls,” he said.
Samuel further revealed that Empire’s youth development head, Akeem “Little Sam” Grant, will also be running sessions during the camp, alongside Lesroy Frederick.
Registration for the camp is free with Samuel reassuring that refreshments will be provided for all participants.
Interested person are asked to call 779-2370 or 780-1931 for registration details.