With an­oth­er Sec­ondary school Foot­ball League sea­son on the hori­zon in Sep­tem­ber, the first re­turn to play since 2019, the var­i­ous mem­bers of the com­pet­ing schools will no doubt be an­tic­i­pat­ing a com­pe­ti­tion that pro­vides ex­cit­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to show­case abil­i­ties and are im­por­tant learn­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for the young stu­dent-ath­letes in our coun­try.

Every play­er who ends up on the fi­nal ros­ter of his school team should be ready to give his all for so many rea­sons. The young play­er’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ties re­late to do­ing what is nec­es­sary to max­imise the op­por­tu­ni­ties that will come their way this sea­son. These re­spon­si­bil­i­ties in­clude giv­ing their best ef­fort, be­ing re­spon­si­ble and dis­ci­plined, lis­ten­ing to coach­es, be­ing good at sports, be­ing pre­pared, be­ing re­spect­ful, and, im­por­tant­ly, be­ing grate­ful for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to play and rep­re­sent their schools and com­mu­ni­ties.

To each play­er, some oth­er prac­ti­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties will in­clude par­tic­i­pat­ing in all train­ing ses­sions, get­ting the most out of coach­ing, be­ing co­op­er­a­tive and ex­press­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion to your par­ents, school staff, team coach­es, and every­one else that will help you strive to­ward your goals.

But while play­ers and coach­es will be anx­ious to take the field, they should al­so be pre­pared to ex­pect the un­ex­pect­ed. Things nev­er go ex­act­ly as planned. Some­thing un­ex­pect­ed or un­usu­al will in­evitably hap­pen. Play­ers, coach­es and man­agers need to main­tain a sense of hu­mour or achieve a lev­el of per­spec­tive when things out of the or­di­nary oc­cur. At these times it will be use­ful to utilise pre­planned re­fo­cus­ing strate­gies. Fur­ther, some crises or set­backs could al­so arise. Dur­ing those times, it will be im­por­tant to prob­lem solve and find al­ter­nate ways to push through the is­sue. Open com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the League and teams will be im­por­tant at this point. Lessons need to be drawn and ad­just­ments made to main­tain and re­gain men­tal readi­ness and op­ti­mal fo­cus.

The to­tal ex­pe­ri­ence for me means hav­ing fun, de­vel­op­ing es­sen­tial life skills and achiev­ing their goals. This is what the main ben­e­fits of the SS­FL will be for every­one tak­ing part.

Prac­ti­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of man­age­ment teams in­clude en­sur­ing that your play­ers have the nec­es­sary equip­ment, prop­er coach­ing, and trans­porta­tion, among oth­er lo­gis­ti­cal con­cerns. Psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al sup­port in­cludes pro­vid­ing love, guid­ance, en­cour­age­ment, and per­spec­tive in their ef­forts must al­so be on the cards

To par­ents, coach­es, man­agers and school staff who will be in­volved, it may be nec­es­sary to make a list­ing of what you, in your par­tic­u­lar roles, can do to help your play­ers suc­ceed. Ask your play­ers what you can do to help them and what you should avoid do­ing. Next, have the play­er al­so make a list of what their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties should be. If you feel your play­ers have missed some im­por­tant re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, sug­gest them. Then, iden­ti­fy oth­er in­di­vid­u­als who will have re­spon­si­bil­i­ties with­in the team and list what re­spon­si­bil­i­ties they should have.

There should al­so be con­se­quences for not ful­fill­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. The best con­se­quences are those that re­move some­thing of im­por­tance to the play­ers and give them the con­trol to get it back by act­ing ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, for in­stance, reach­ing late to prac­tice or not show­ing at all. Find a way to make the play­er not want to make this mis­take again for the rest of the sea­son.

If those in charge along with the play­ers are in agree­ment on their re­spec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, all should run quite smooth­ly. On the oth­er hand, if there is con­flict re­lat­ed to each of your re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, trou­ble like­ly lies ahead. To pre­vent prob­lems from aris­ing once the new sea­son ar­rives, you’ll want to dis­cuss be­fore the sea­son starts how you can all get on the same page about who is re­spon­si­ble for what.

As teams en­ter the fi­nal stages of prepa­ra­tion for the SS­FL over the com­ing few days, it is im­por­tant to ad­here to the “less is more” at­ti­tude. The ten­den­cy is to want to over-pre­pare for the event by squeez­ing in a num­ber of ses­sions and warm-up games as the sea­son open­er ap­proach­es, Your play­ers need to be well rest­ed and men­tal­ly re­laxed in or­der to per­form op­ti­mal­ly. Small re­fine­ments may be nec­es­sary but the key is to stick with the el­e­ments that have been work­ing. Of­ten this min­i­mal­i­sa­tion is achieved with a sim­ple ta­per­ing plan, but it is im­por­tant that both coach­es and play­ers are aware of the con­cept and mind­ful of its im­ple­men­ta­tion.

There is a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence be­tween hav­ing a com­pe­ti­tion “Per­for­mance” and a com­pe­ti­tion “Ex­pe­ri­ence.” A com­pe­ti­tion “Per­for­mance” im­plies a clear fo­cus on the task at hand and a com­mit­ment to choic­es that will give the best pos­si­ble chance for op­ti­mal per­for­mance to oc­cur. Con­verse­ly, a com­pe­ti­tion “Ex­pe­ri­ence” im­plies tak­ing in the sights and sounds of the com­pe­ti­tion with­out a clear goal or fo­cus. Ul­ti­mate­ly, it will be im­por­tant to find a bal­ance be­tween the two and al­low an op­por­tu­ni­ty to be ab­sorbed in the league at­mos­phere. Re­mem­ber the league has seen no ac­tion for over two years, so there will be rough ar­eas and good qual­i­ty may take time. But hey, en­joy the Sea­son as if there’s “no to­mor­row.”