U13 FH vs Ajax April 2013 Highlights from Ubuntu Football on Vimeo.

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We won our two group games pretty convincingly against Devonshire (Cape District LFA) and Morgenster (Mitchells Plain LFA).  Luke Fleurs had 5 goals in those 2 matches.  Then, all 8 group winners were redrawn their opponents for the Quarterfinals the next morning.  We were drawn with Ajax CT, the strongest of the professional clubs in Cape Town.  Last year’s U13s had beaten them twice but this is a new group and weren’t sure how they would respond.

Luke scoring against Devonshire

Well, they came out like gang busters, with no fear.  We were so proud to see their response to the competition.  We controlled all the play in the first half and created the vast majority of the chances.  We had one shot from distance by Jade Wanza go off their cross bar.  I was sure we would be the first to score but we got to halftime with the nil-nil score.  We were confident about the 2nd half ahead.  Ajax made some changes because of how dominant we were in the first half.  A few minutes into the 2nd half we played a through ball that Ajax’s goalkeeper won just in front of Kiyan Raw.  Within a few passes they had countered to our end, exposed some bad positioning by our right back, and had scored the 1st goal.  It was so quick!  We continued to pressure their goal and their keeper came up with some great saves.  With a few minutes left we made another defensive error which led to an own goal and the final score of 2-0.  The scoreline certainly didn’t reflect the flow of the game, but was probably fair based on our training.  Ajax’s team has been together for over a year while our U13 were playing their 4th match together.  We are sure those mistakes will be solved before we see Ajax again in our league.

Kiyan & Brandon taking the game to Ajax CT

We were most proud of the grit and courage the boys showed.  They weren’t in awe of Ajax and were so positive in their play.  They took the game to them and if that attitude continues we will have a superb season.  Looking forward to it!

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Joining the Team

Lambert High School in Suwanee, GA, a suburb northeast of Atlanta, has joined the Ubuntu Football Team.  This past Friday they hosted the first of a series of fundraisers at their Boys’ Soccer Match.  We’re hoping to see a great partnership forming between their school and Ubuntu Football.  By the way, they won the match!

Would your school, club, or class like to also join the Ubuntu Team as well?  Contact us and let’s start getting connected!

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The Entire Academy Group

Gavin Keller, the Principal of the Sun Valley Group, gave a moving message about their school’s unique philosophy of education from what we have learned over the years about how children’s brains operate and what serves them best.

Gavin’s moving & creative message.

Michael and I shared the stories of a few of our older boys, Carl & Sinethemba.  They are really growing and excelling and we wanted our guests to see how their support is really changing lives and making an impact.

The School Decorated SO Beautifully!!

We closed this part of the night by launching our new Teammate Strategy and asking our guests to get behind it.  We are excited to see how this spreads here and abroad.

Special Touch the School Created

After this section of our night our guests moved over the High School for desert and coffee.  Many stuck around a long time chatting to each other and to some of the players.

It was another fantastic event.  We have to think Sun Valley so much for all the amazing things they did to make the night a success.  We are just hoping to see this event continuing to grow over the years as we add more and more supporters!

Players & Coach Sean Dominating the Leftovers

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Gibbo with the 98s & 99s after an exciting session.

One of the things Gibbo did was spend time coaching our Academy kids.  In lots of ways he was simply painting pictures for us of how our training sessions could look.  It was great to see the way he does things and his unique style.

Gibbo giving instructions at the Coaching Clinic.

Another thing we had Gibbo do was lead a coaching clinic for all of our coaches at Fish Hoek AFC, our partner club.  We had great attendance from the coaches.  And our Ubuntu boys that had to help as the participants did quite well.  Two were quickly labeled “Steven Gerrard” and “Glen Johnson” by the old Englishman.  I’m pretty sure they both loved it, being that they were both Liverpool fans.  We’ve already seen a difference in our coaching sessions at the club after Gibbo’s input.

Gibbo with our Staff.

Finally, Gibbo just got stuck spending lots of time with our staff.  Conversations over meals, in the car, while watching training and matches, and at our Team Meeting.  We loved here his stories, his ideas, and his unique ways of seeing things.  If this was Gibbo’s only time with us, he definitely made an impression, but we’re believing that this was only the beginning!!

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Now we’ve been written about in “The Zimbabwean”, an international newspaper produced in the UK, but read by Zimbabweans all over the world.  This article will give you a great idea about where we are headed in the future and how Zimbabwe is a part of it.

Zimbabwean Newspaper Article

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Here is what he had to say:

A few weeks back, following the piece on what African football needs in order to develop, I received a nice e-mail from Casey Prince who is one of a team of coaches who is working on a football academy in South Africa.  My feeling was that his insights were too good to keep for myself which is why this issue’s editorial is a slightly abridged version of that e-mail.

To read the rest of the article, click on the link below:

http://us6.campaign-archive1.com/?u=26b82eb5b1c46f39eed2b42cc&id=48d1cf58cb&e=7f6178e173

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Here is a clip of Eric’s beautiful goal, which turned out to be the winner.

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We are fortunate to have some new speed training equipment given to us by one of our supporters for Christmas.  It definitely kept things fresh.  Check out Joshua Clayton, our 1998 goalkeeper, doing Lateral W Slides with the Bungee Cord resistance trainer.

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The entire group before leaving!

We started off just sharing with them about our family, how we ended up here, and the work we are doing with Ubuntu Football.  The thing about these students is that they ask the best questions.  They are so inquisitive and look at things much deeper than the surface.  We’ve always enjoyed our visits from ELON, but this group was really on the ball.

We then split the group into 3 groups of 10.  One group went to help out a local preschool that we connect with sometimes.  They were just going to help with getting ready for the start of school the next day, but they ended up painting the entire main room of the school and leaving loads of paint for the rest of the rooms!  Those girls worked hard.

The group of ladies that did some amazing painting at Aquila Preschool

The other 2 groups ran clinics in Ocean View and Masiphumelele to help us launch Football Forward for the year.  Masi is a community we are trying to grow into, so starting to create a presence is important to that process.  The students did a great job with the clinics even on a really hot day.

Group leading the Masi clinic

We are really hoping to see some of these students again.  Many of our past ELON guests have been supporting us in different ways and we hope that will be the case with this group.  And we look forward to having them with us again next January!

Group leading the Ocean View clinic

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