The JFA Nadeshiko Square was held at Fujieda Junshin Girls Soccer School on Sunday 3 August. A number of kids who saw JFA’s website, Fujieda City’s public relations media or distributed flyers came together to the event site. Children were very pleased when high school girls showed examples of their skills and joined their drills together. Coaching children seemed to mean a lot to high school students as well when they could learn how difficult coaching is and see football from a coach’s perspective.

One of the big characteristics of the activity at Fujieda Junshin Girls Soccer School is that there is expectation that some of participating students become female coaches in the future.

Since kindergarten and elementary school children tend to have their concentration distracted easily, instructors made some efforts to keep them entertained. When instructors wanted children to have enough space around not to hit others, they told children to spread their arms with a ball in hand and to try to rotate without dropping the ball. They even told them to shout “Helicopter!” as they rotate. Another example was giving high fives to children who did good job or tried hard.

Comments

NAKAI Shinya, School Master
Nadeshiko Square has taken place twice a month for kindergarten and lower grades elementary school kids to provide them with a place where they can meet football for the first time in their life. Participants have different purposes, for example, there are kids who just got interested in football and kids who are encouraged by their family to play football for health enhancement. But I work on this event to let participating kids feel like “football is fun” or “I want to play it again.” When I see kids chasing the ball and kicking the ball with a smile on their face, I feel like “my work has paid off.” I will keep making efforts to upgrade the feeling of “football is fun” to “I want to play football again”, “I want to play football better” and “I want to be a football player.” Through the Nadeshiko Square experience, I dream of kids stepping up to a junior club and to junior youth club. After leaving Nadeshiko Square, I dream of them playing well for Junshin High School and taking a leap in the future to Nadeshiko Japan. I will do all my best to help kids so that this dream will come true.

MASUDA AYANO, Participant
I enjoyed playing at Nadeshiko Square a lot. I’m happy to play football with a lot of friends. I hope the next Nadeshiko Square is coming soon. I wish I could always play football with high school girls.

Parent of MASUDA Ayano
It is great that the event takes place with inexpensive price on an artificial turf ground. My kid looks forward to the event every time. I hope it will continue to be held in the future as well.

JFA Nadeshiko Square

"JFA Nadeshiko Square"is a place and time for anyone, from the women to the children, to casually and periodically start football and futsal and keep enjoying them in their daily life. We are looking for organizers as well.

More details (Japanese version only)