KAREN EARNSHAW
The Marshall Islands Soccer Federation has “huge ambitions” to be able to develop soccer in the RMI following the success of a series of soccer camps held recently at Delap Park.
The federation’s guest soccer coach, Britain’s Lloyd Owers, told the Journal that “we now have huge ambitions to develop this further in a shorter timeframe than planned due to the huge interest we came across.”
A large part of this optimism stems from the fact that the Public School System has plans to include soccer in the national school curriculum.
PSS’ Director of Sports, Pranson Eliou, confirmed these plans this week: “Yes, I can confirm that the Marshall Islands Soccer Federation has been running soccer camps throughout the summer with the help of Coach Lloyd. The federation has asked if we could insert soccer into the schools’ daily activities … We are currently in the process of training our physical education (PE) teachers on soccer and so when things are running smoothly with them, that’s when we’ll be able to insert it into our annual sports calendar.”
Lloyd described the camps at Delap Park as being an amazing experience: “To be able to deliver those sessions in Majuro and to see 26 children playing in a session was incredible, but to then have 22 men turn up to their session as well as 23 coaches at the coach education workshop was amazing for the development of the sport.”
He said the next steps “will be to hold more sessions, which are now taking place on a weekly basis with kids sessions at Delap Park on Wednesday and Co-op School on Saturdays.”
The aim is to hold regular weekly sessions in other parts of Majuro in the near future, but Lloyd said that “the news that soccer is being put on the national curriculum for schools is the best news yet, as now children will grow up playing the game that the rest of the world loves.”
Sports Director Pranson said that he and Lloyd are in constant communication via email: “I still need him to train our PE teachers. In the weeks to come he will conduct virtual training with our guys to have them familiarize themselves with the sport.”