Last week’s session of l’Hockey Folie made me reflect on the number of participants currently participating in the program. When we envisioned the program, the original plan was to have between twenty and thirty children participate. I thought that I would easily be able to a group of fifteen to twenty by myself and then we could have two groups throughout my stay here. Oh, how little did I know.
For the program’s first day, we hosted sixteen children at the first Decouvert (Discover) session. I was completely lost. Granted, I did not have the experience or confidence that I now have when working with the kids; but the mere technical issue of how to get sixteen youngsters suited-up into gear when it’s just myself and an assistant from the centre aéré was enough to make me wonder if the program could work. So after the Decouvert sessions were over Evelyne and I decided that it would be best to host two groups of ten children in six week periods. Although we made this request to the Centre Aéré, nothing seems to quite go as planned. Several of the original participants have stopped going the Centre Aéré altogether and others only come sporadically. Therefore, in the past six weeks I have seen a cast of around twenty different faces with ten who come on a regular basis. This isn’t all bad which is good because it’s pretty much out of anyone’s control. (Maybe the only thing to do would be to get the parents more involved, but that’s a whole other issue).
This past week provided some insight into my question over the varying numbers and how that affects the quality or efficacy of the program. There were only seven players there, yet six of them have come at least five times. Consequently, they were the players who have made some of the most progress and are developing a real sense of the game’s fundamentals. So keeping in mind that the current arrangements provide me with few options to have more control over the number of children who participate and how consistently they show up, I decided that the fact there are at least eight children currently really excited about their new sport is enough to keep going. I might not even change the groups after this coming holiday break and instead encourage some of the people who have been on the fringes to come more often while keeping the consistent participants.
And if you want to see how much progress they have made, check out this video of Ismaël scoring a goal.
