In September, in all the schools, the school year begins, but for Nadia this is a new training season. From the first days of the fall, we have children of different ages come to us – some of them come by themselves, some are brought by parents, so more and more were coming to us… There were many, many. This caused us even a bit of panic: what are we going to do with all of them?
We thought: our playing field is not big enough, and it seems that we have many coaches and it must be enough for practices, but still we do not have as many coaches as we need for a quality training process. This is actually another need to pray for, but still this is a real problem. We need a larger soccer field and a bigger gym. Dividing children into the different age groups, we ended up with 5 groups! This means that we will have about 100 children coming for practice, and there are still youth and adult teams. The junior team “Kids” is the funniest one and at the same time is the most problematic. The boys 4-6 years old have a hard time dealing with the discipline and order, many of them still want to act out, but here you need to do some serious exercises, listening to the coach. After practicing on the field, we stop and sit down for the biblical lesson, and we study the Gospel along with the parents, we learn to apply simple life principles.
The older group U-9 is not much different from the “Kids” regarding an order and discipline, but the level of soccer skills and Biblical knowledge allows us to deal with them more seriously. Zhenya Palchevsky is the coach for 11-year-olds, he is an ex-student from “Nadiya” who debuted as a coach, it is very interesting to watch him leading a training session and a lesson as he learns to build up a team and love his pupils, by the way, Zhenya managed to run two friendly games, one of which he won and another was finished in a draw.
The teams U-13 and U-15 were taken by Pasha Ozarchuk and Dima Sosnovsky in fall respectively. Last year, they worked together in the same team, where Pasha helped Dima with the U-14 team. From September 1st, P. Ozarchuk has his first independent work, and the first team that he has on his own. The guy, despite the young age, has become more mature recently both spiritually and physically. A great contribution to this was his training at Alan Nixon’s coaching courses conducted by the Christian Football Association of Ukraine.
Our youth team in the end of September began the second round of the regional championship. At the beginning of the season, it was clear that we did not have to wait for great success, because our players were gathered as the team only in the spring, we have many debutants, many are inexperienced players, I even called myself these young men a “Health Group.” The season kicked off with a lot of tension on the field, there were a lot of defeats – we were losing with a great difference in score, but closer to half of the championship guys, having gained some experience and strength, were morally able to win several matches and had a couple of games ended with the draw. In the summer time, a few beginners have joined us, and now they are listening to what the Bible has to say with great curiosity. If we preserved the “backbone” of this team, the next year we would try to set a more serious goal before the boys.
And finally about our adults. Before the end of the championship of the Rivne region among the teams of the first league is left just a few rounds. Unfortunately, we could not take the first place but there is a chance to take for the first time in our history the second place. Lesha Lupenko has managed to gather the guys around the soccer and around the Word of God, successfully combining the experience of the veterans and yesterday’s boys, most of whom are his pupils. It seems like our adults have good prospects.
And now I’d like to say about our most important events in September. This month, Dima, our soccer player, has entered into a covenant with the Lord through the water baptism. And our Andriy Kazmyruk got married, establishing a family with Katya Alionova!
Thank God for the profuse harvest in September!
Alexander Honchar
