FRONTBALL ACADEMY GAMES 2016
First day, first contact, first difficulty: the language barrier!
French, english, spanish, and even a few words of arabic… Ok, there is always a solution. With our translator Marion, we manage to connect everyone with everyone.
And very quickly, the magic of sport makes its job! During the first training, with a few gestures, some glances, one, two or three words in english or in spanish, the teenagers manage to communicate amongst themselves… The only thing is to dare!
On the schedule of the week:
2 hours of frontball every morning, in Larochefoucault gym which counts 3 frontball courts.
Everyone practiced and improved by its own rhythm, learning perseverance, respect, the importance of listening, and the desire to go beyond its own limits.
Some of the kids weren’t used to play on official standard walls, and they had a chance to develop their game, ending showing the best of their capacities. Like Sifiso, this young South-African frontballer who is used to play on a 2.50m wall while waiting for the construction of a new better one. We saw him letting himself go and play such a better frontball during this week, and he even ended winning the finals in his group!
The very first edition of the Frontball Academy Games happened this year in Biarritz.
After 4 years of work including the creation of different Open Walls sites in the world, setting up a whole pedagogic system with adapted tools... The Frontball Games allowed us to gather children from those worldwide sites for one week.
The sport goal? To organize the first junior Frontball tournament after a week of training.
But beside this goal, we want to start the new episode of our social mission by enabling those kids from different cultures and different social backgrounds to meet up and learn from themselves on the Frontball court.
In this spirit, 32 teenagers met up for an intense sporting week.
In the afternoon : chilling and discovering Basque Country thanks to various activities.
Being amazed in the « Petit train de la Rhune » climbing over the mountain, discovering the legendary waves of Anglet and Biarritz, a sunset picnic on the beach in Saint-Jean de Luz followed by a giant confetti battle during the traditional Toro de Fuego… A lot of happy and funny times that served as an icebreaker!
Every morning on the court, warmed up by the growing enthusiastic atmosphere, the teenagers got more and more confident about themselves.
Saturday, July 9th: the first official « Frontball Academy Games » tournament.
Set up in pools among three level groups, each kid has been able to play games, and went back home with medals and a 2016 Frontball Academy Games certificate.
An intense week indelibly printed on everyone memories.