Poipet FC

Poipet has gone football crazy! The sports tournament over New Year was followed by the start of the 2010 soccer league in early January. We have eight Under 16s teams and seven Girls teams playing on two fields every Sunday afternoon from about 1pm to 5:30pm. It took a few weeks to build up the Girls teams. The first weekend we only had two teams ready to play. By week two there were four teams. Then suddenly, seven. (Yay!)

I coach a Girls team from one of the local public schools. We are Poipet FC. (Of course that’s short for Poipet Football Club….). Poipet FC is mostly Grade 7 kids and almost all of the players are fifteen or sixteen years old. These girls aren’t the poorest in Poipet but I still lost one who dropped out of Year 7 to go work in Thailand three weeks ago. Hopefully the rest can keep studying and playing soccer for the final four weeks in the league. It would be awesome if all 14 of them complete this school year. (That’s one of my prayers for them and something I intend to follow-up on…) I’m really enjoying getting to know the girls from Poipet FC, bumping into them around town, introducing them to an English school, talking about what they hope to do when they leave school and learning to speak in a firm voice when some of my naughty players need discipline!

A couple of weeks ago we had a round-robin girls tournament. After a tense penalty shoot out, Poipet FC won the final so we’re currently the number one team in our little comp! The win inspired many of the team members to train hard and keep improving. Training sessions are tomorrow & Saturday at 3pm at Poipet High School if you want to come check it out?! : )