Football

     For the last few weeks for football, we have been focusing mainly on our in-game skills, and how to apply them into an actual game, as we've realized our match skills require a lot more improvement, (increased awareness for my own strength and ares for growth), therefore we have played a lot of skirmishes for the last few weeks (planned and initiated activities).

     There is definitely more improvement in each of us, therefore the skirmishes are becoming more and more physically challenging, for everyone, especially since more of my peers joined the activity, yet I continue to try my best and not let my team down, and encourage my teammates, especially those who are younger than me or are having a tougher time, even if we are losing (showing perseverance and commitment in my activities) (worked collaboratively with others).

     During the training sessions (trying to improve our in-game skills) (developing new skills) and a skirmish afterwards to try and apply learnt skills into an actual match.

First Week of Football

   On the last week of October was the first week of football for me. Personally it was a new experience for me as it was kids younger than me, as usually I take part in planned and initiated activities with peers or kids older than me, where I could learn from them, but now I have to teach to others and undertake new challenges (developing new leadership skills). For warm up we had to partner up with each other and practice on our passes (work collaboratively with others), and I partnered up with a colleague younger than me named Virat. I helped him practice his passes and teach him the right method for passes and improve his skills. We worked very collaboratively with each other, and improved each others skills in different ways, and not only that, towards the end I had made a new friend!

   Me and Virat practicing passes during warm-up

Towards the end we played a skirmish, which gave me a opportunity to really increase my awareness on my own strengths and areas for growth, such as I realized that throughout the game, my aim when taking shots at goal, as most often I missed the goal by shooting too high. Also it gave me a chance to get to know every bodies strengths and weaknesses so I can help them improve on their football skills by working collaboratively with others. It also gave me a chance to show my perseverance and commitment to the activity, as no matter how many times we missed or lost possession of the ball, me and my team never gave up and kept trying and that way we managed to end the game in a tie!

Swimming

   This week for swimming, I attended the Austisa Sports Club for practices on Monday and Friday from 6:00 to 8:30 (pm).
    For this week me and my coach (Mr. Perera) mainly focused on improving my 25m sprints, most importantly on my freestyle and breaststroke. In the start of the training session, we first started stretching. I lead the stretch session (developing leadership skills), it was my first time leading activities in swimming, so I was a bit nervous, yet excited, as I had to lead a big group of people. It was tougher than I thought, it was hard to keep everyone on track with me, most people got confused as to which stretch we were doing. Overall, it was a new experience for me.
    When we got to the swimming we carried off planned and initiated activities, we started off by a 1000m freestyle swim, which was tough, as I've only done swimming this long a couple times before, so I was still developing my endurance in swimming (developing new skills), and since it was still a relatively new experience I was undertaking new challenges, which were out of comfort zone. This will help improve my skills in swimming, and in day to day life, as I will be more comfortable and enthusiastic to take on new challenges in life.
    Later we moved on to 50m freestyle and 2nd stroke kicks. It was particularly difficult, especially for me as my kick for freestyle is very weak and my endurance in swimming is even weaker, but it was a good opportunity for me to improve my kick, for both my freestyle and breaststroke (which I am more comfortable with).
    During the last half an hour of swimming, I suggested we carried out some 25m sprints, just to check our overall improvement at the end of the activities (planning and initiating activities). We did three 25m sprints; two freestyle, and one second stroke (any stroke besides freestyle). For the freestyle sprints; I achieved a timing of 14.95 seconds, for the first one and 16.23seconds for the second time. The 14.95 seconds timing was quite an improvement for, from my usual 15 seconds for freestyle, especially since freestyle is not my strongest stroke For the second stroke (I did breaststroke), I achieved a timing of 20. 4 seconds, which wasn't an improvement, but still a decent timing. Although I was not developing skills, I was developing existing skills, which I believe is also very important, not only in sports and activities, but in life too.