TY WITH CUALA
Every Friday night starting in September , Ken Fitz got all of the Cuala transition year girls and boys together to get us more involved with the club.
On these Fridays we began to learn new skills to teach the youngest kids in academy how to pick up hurling, camogie and football.
During these meetings we got separated into groups and got to know everyone better, after 6 weeks of learning how to coach we began actually using the drills to coach the kids.
They were so cute and you got to know your fellow coaches really well. It began to get a lot more fun when you got to know the kids better and their personalities really started to come out.
We learnt the most important thing was for every kid to have fun and get involved. We taught them all about how Cuala is about respect.
After a while the kids parents began to get more involved with the trainings, and soon enough after all of our hard work paid off the parents were able to take the coaching into their own hands.
Once the coaching had ended I realised how much I missed working with the kids, but soon I realised there is always help to be given with Cuala and I was able to get involved with refereeing and camp coaching.
Overall my experience with Cuala coaching was one of the best things I did in TY and I will definitely miss it going into fifth year.
Hannah McKenna
I had an extremely enjoyable and productive transition year with Cuala.
There were a great variety of refereeing and coaching activities which I have learnt and developed from.
During the course of the year, I coached the 2018 age group boys and girls on Saturday mornings, took part in refereeing the Mini All-Ireland tournament and coached in the summer camps.
During my time doing these three, I have learnt countless skills about dealing with children one on one, in bigger groups and also communicating with the parents of children.
I met and coached with lots of new Cuala members, including senior players who I got to know very well, in particular over the weeks I coached in the Cuala camps.
The refereeing was a great experience which I enjoyed very much.
I would definitely recommend to next year’s transition year to partake in everything you can with Cuala as you will undoubtedly learn, improve and enjoy from these experiences.
Cillian Ó Dochraigh
