I enjoy playing football, I was selected for every school football tournament and was performing great . Because of the pandemic and the lockdown I was not able to play football regularly. I sometimes played football with my friends but all the tournaments got cancelled for 2 years and are still cancelled. I really wanted to play a tournament and compete against other teams. After the physical school started, some of the students from my school were organising a football tournament. I quickly registered my team as I was so eager to play the tournament. I also wanted to test my game after not being in practise for a long time. I thought that my game would not be that great compared to what it was before the lockdown. This was also a major reason why I wanted to play in a tournament to test my skills and abilities.
LO1: Yes, before the tournament I did identify my strengths and weaknesses. This is a very important part of any sport. Knowing about your strengths and weaknesses lets you select the right position for you and hence your team can take good advantage of your strengths by keeping you at certain positions so that my strengths are being utilised and my weaknesses won’t hamper my performance for that particular position. I always used to do goalkeeping and this position requires good reflexes and agility in order to stop the ball from going into the goal. In the tournament I played the same position of goalkeeper as my reflexes and agility was the same and I was able to do good goalkeeping. I did switch my position in the game from goalkeeper to a defender for sometime because the situation at that time required me to play as a defender, as all of my teammates also suggested to me at that point of time that I should play as a defender and hence I switched my position. This was also because I have a lot of strength and defender is a position where you need to be tough. It is important for us to know our strengths and weaknesses as it would help us place ourselves in a better position. It would make us work harder on our weaknesses and use our strengths where they are required. For example, my team knows that I have good power and strength and that is why they suggested that I should switch my position for sometime as we had conceded 2 goals at that time and we needed a tough defender. Similarly, if we know our strengths and weaknesses we can use them for the right thing. My weakness is my speed, I am not that slow but I am not even as fast as other players. Because of the lockdown my speed decreased. I would like to work on this weakness as this could affect my performance in a positive way. Speed is a very important component in football and working on this will definitely help me and my team as well.
LO2: The challenging part about this experience was that I was not at all in practise, before the pandemic when the schools were offline I would practise a lot in school as we had slots that were specially to play and practice the sport which you have selected, also I would go out with my friends and play in a turf or an actual ground. But the school being online I was not able to practise at all, and I wasn’t even able to go out and play with my friends as social gatherings were strictly not allowed by the government. So, playing after a long time was very challenging for me. I overcame this challenge, as I was going to a gym regularly which was helping me to keep my fitness levels up to the mark, but not practising football will definitely not help me to keep up with the skills and movement that I had earlier. So, before the tournament I would go practise with my friends as at that time covid was not at peak and the cases were also very low and the government did give the permission to open up the turfs. So I practiced a little bit before the tournament. I feel good that I took this challenge as it is very difficult for people to play after a long time and you are also more prone to injuries if you play after long.
LO5: Football is a team game, without the team you’re nothing. For me, working with others is easy as I have been playing this sport for a long time, I understand my teammates and I know what next move they are going to make which helps me decide my next move in the game. So in this particular activity it was easy for me to work with others. It is very important to work collaboratively with others as you can’t just play football without passing the ball. Passing is an important skill in football as the whole game revolves around it. Not working collaboratively during the match won’t ever win you the match. Hence it is important to work collaboratively.
The learner profile characteristics that I developed during this activity was risk-taker as I was playing after a long time. Also communication as a goalkeeper can observe the whole game from the back and they need to instruct their teammates on how they can make their next move or what they are doing wrong and that requires good communication skills. I did not achieve success as were knocked out in semi finals but atleast taking part in this tournament made me feel so good.
EVIDENCE:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JKYBetV2lLY4__3MmpQzBesdHWWCilShsJUYphvCd8s/edit?usp=sharing