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Quest Chairman for Australia
Bryan Coggle



md201yoty@bigpond.com

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National Winners Report 2009-2010
2010-2011 2009 - 2010 2008 - 2009 2007 - 2008 2006 - 2007

2005 - 2006

  International Tour
Ghana
International Tour
Vanuatu
International Tour
Turkey
United Kingdom
New Zealand
United Kingdom
New Zealand

YOUTH OF THE YEAR

International Tour

by 2009-2010 National winner

Will Teare

 

In July 2011 I found myself in a rather sticky situation. It was 1.00 in the morning, pouring with rain and I was six hours drive from nearest city. I stood on the side of the road in a village I didn’t know the name of, bargaining with a taxi driver who barely spoke English to take us to a backpackers’ accommodation I had no idea how to get to whilst simultaneously convince two crying Irish girls who I had just met that we were somehow going to get out of there. Sound like your idea of an adventure?

After I was named the Lions’ Youth of the Year for 2010, I was told that part of my prize was a trip to the UK to a Lions’ Youth exchange camp. Unfortunately due to the timing of my university exams I couldn’t take part. In lieu of this, the Youth of the Year coordinators graciously helped to fund a position I had been offered in Accra, Ghana.

I was accepted into a charity called “United Through Sport Ghana”, who bring athletes in from Europe, Australia and the U.S.A to coach local teams in their chosen sport. I was selected, along with a Scottish National League player, Carrie, to coach hockey for the four weeks of my stay. Whilst the idea of coaching my sport in a foreign country was a little daunting, this sort of opportunity was not likely to come along again.

Whilst in Ghana I had many placements, not all of which were hockey based. Teaching orphans to read and write in a shanty town was possibly one of the most confronting things I have ever had to do.  In my last week in Ghana I was asked to teach a seven year old girl who had never spoken a word. Her parents had died when she was younger and she was bought to the orphanage. Teaching her was both incredibly frustrating and rewarding. Knowing that my few days of effort would help to turn somebody’s life around was a feeling that came often during my trip, and one that can’t be explained.

In the hockey side of my trip, the reason that I was there, I was placed as an assistant to the Ghanaian national coach; under him I was given the reigns of both the youth development squad and the national women goalkeepers. It was out of this coaching that I got some of the greatest moments of my time away. Seeing a young goalkeeper step into the national team for the first time in her career and play like a champion made me proud to be her coach. Seeing my youth boys struggling with a skill for hours each day until they perfected it, made my coaching worthwhile. If Australian kids put as much time and effort into their sport and education as Ghanian children, we would live in a very different country.

Of course the trip wasn’t all sunshine and butterflies.  After the first week the realities of living in the developing world started to show. In a school I was working in I regularly saw children beaten until they bled, for something as trivial as being five minutes late for class. I would regularly walk past children sifting through piles of burning rubbish for food and know there was little I could do to help them. Many of you may already know that I was hospitalised after I returned with a life threatening case of Malaria. Luckily I survived, but any images I had about life in the third world were drastically changed during my trip.

Despite all the struggles, my time away was one of the best experiences of my life. I saw things I would never have got the opportunity to otherwise see, and have experienced a small taste of life in Africa. Working with Hockey Ghana was rewarding, challenging and enormously fun – and that link is something I hope to foster in the future. I would like to thank NAB and Lions’ Australia for the opportunity and your generosity; Youth of the Year is something you can be proud of.

Myself and Carrie (left) teaching at the orphanage

Coaching at the academy

The Ghanian Youth Academy Squad

   
 

Myself in full hockey kit

 

 

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