This year, before I started in the office here, our team for the summer spent two weeks in Edmonton for a combination of this thing called NTC (National Training Camp) and also a week of head coaches training. NTC is a week long intensive camp designed to create scenarios where athletes from across the country can intentionally integrate faith in sport, while at the same time dealing with idolatry in sport and addressing various motivations that they have for playing at all. There were around 60 people there from across the country participating, and it was a sweet time to meet people that shared the same desires for their sport. The conversations may have been my favourite part of the whole experience, as we got to reflect on what we had experienced and talk about how we were feeling challenged and convicted as the week went on. The week consisted of a combination of classroom/theory sessions as we looked at what the Bible has to say about competing allegiances/motivations, and then we took to the court for on-court labs of either basketball or volleyball, and played in various scenarios designed to encourage us to address the reality of what we were thinking and our motivations on the court. We did things like compete in complete silence and with no communication with our teammates at all, or we played volleyball where the best player on our team had to wear hockey gloves during the game. I went into the week with a mindset that I was only there because it was made mandatory for the summer camp coaches. But during the silent/no communication volleyball, I was extremely convicted. This was the first time I had ever experienced 'deafening silence', so to speak. The only thoughts I had throughout were self-condemning, and I was really challenged in that to reconsider the stance I had coming into the week. I am very competitive, but I thought I had it fully under control, to the point where my identity was never tied to how I did in a game. That pride was ripped up at NTC, which was humbling, devastating, and fantastic all at the same time.
NTC was an exhausting week, but all of the people who would be at head coaches' training the next week were also there, so we got to build some pretty solid relationships before the week of training we would be participating in together. There were four new head coaches across the country this year, which is sweet. Saskatchewan was having a summer of camps for the first time ever, and so for the first time there is going to be seven teams of coaches going across the country. I had the privilege, as one of the returning head coaches, of leading some of the training sessions. They went okay, but it was a cool opportunity to get the chance to help inspire new head coaches with the vision AIA has for its head coaches. There were some changes made to the schedule and flow of soccer camps this year, and so much of the week was spent working through that, and addressing questions that arose. The week was an overall encouraging time, and I'm excited to see how the new changes will play out over the course of a summer. I'm also stoked to stay in contact with the coaches I met as we work together across the country to share Jesus and redeem the world we live in.
Now I'm back at home, which is delightful. I have much to do before the summer begins, and I am excited to do so. Thank you for reading this unnecessarily long post. I know sometimes when you read this much it all turns into "blah blog blog", but thanks for sticking around till the end.
