THE Northern Storm Blizzards Under 12 boys football team celebrated the close of a great season with pizza in the park with their proud coach, Peter Lewis.
The team won through to the elimination finals in Division 2, but the grand final eluded them.
“It was very tight between 1st and 4th with our team only one win behind the top three,” Coach Lewis told News Of The Area.
The achievements of the multicultural team are more than physical and tactical, they are also linguistic.
Twelve of the 14 team members don’t speak English as their first language.
There are five Kurdish boys, four from Syria and one from Iraq.
“They all speak Kurdish at home.
“The Ethiopian boys and the Eritrean boy speak a common language, and the Congolese boy speaks Swahili.
“The Malaysian-born French boy speaks French at home.
“The Indian Sikh boy speaks Punjabi.”
There are two Irish/Anglo boys.
Nine of the 14 boys in the team come from refugee backgrounds, but for all of them the focus is on soccer and cooperation in the team.
Coach Lewis saw his role as providing pastoral care and helping the boys to develop team dynamics and have fun.
“At training they preferred to have practice games rather than drills, so we’d put our defenders against our attackers for hard fought battles.
“They’re no different from other 12-year-olds who are testing their growing independence against their obligations and consequences.
“Several of the boys show great latent talent and mixed with passion will see them grow as players as well as good contributors to a positive Australian culture.
“It’s an honour to work with these boys who have so much natural sporting talent.”
By Andrea FERRARI
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