Close to 90 youth soccer players enjoyed top-notch instruction from one of the game's best last week.
Drew Ferguson held his annual soccer camp in co-operation with the Sunshine Coast Youth Soccer Association at Cliff Gilker Park. He said the camp was a great time to teach the basics of the game and get kids prepared for the upcoming season.
When Coast Reporter visited the camp on Tuesday morning, Ferguson, along with four older players from the association, was running an enthusiastic group of age seven and under girls and boys through shooting drills.
"The goal of this younger group is to have fun and touch all bases. The first day we did dribbling all day, today is shooting, and tomorrow will be passing - still trying to teach them the fundamentals of soccer, and at the same time making sure they're running around and having fun," said Ferguson.
Later in the day, eight- and nine-year-old players had a two-hour session followed by ages 10 and up in the afternoon. The camp ran all week and wraps up Friday.
"For the older kids, it's basically the same stuff, just higher quality technical stuff," added Ferguson. "We work them a little harder, probably some more fitness involved, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter if you are a professional soccer player or six years old, you still have to trap the ball, pass the ball, dribble the ball and shoot the ball. We want the kids to have fun, but if we can't teach them those skills, they probably won't have much fun, so we still have to teach that."
Ferguson said he was pleased with the number of players involved with the camp and the positive growth of the sport.
"On the Sunshine Coast, you have close to 1,200 kids playing soccer," he said. "A lot of coaches are volunteers, so hopefully in these camps I can teach the kids a few things they can then take back to their coaches and their teams and be better players for the experience. In general, if I have six to seven year olds that came to my camp for two or three years, or anyone's camps for that matter, if you checked on them when they are 10, 11 years old, you would probably see their technical skills are much better than those of the kids who don't attend a camp or an academy. Kids probably don't know it right now, but them being here is helping their growth of soccer and sports in general."
