TORTOLA—A four-day soccer camp that attracted 50 participants and was conducted by the Heads Up Soccer Academy in Pennsylvania, wrapped on up Virgin Gorda on Friday.

Jim Polimo, a regular visitor to Virgin Gorda and board member of the Philadelphia area girls soccer league, said they brought down several coaches to conduct the program for the second successive summer. “The goal of the program is both soccer and cultural,” he pointed out. “We bring down coaches and trainers teaching kids in the camp and it’s a memory they’ll have as a soccer and intercultural experience between the United States and Virgin Gorda.”

Pollimo said last year they brought in an A licensed coach and did a compressed course over a few days, something which was more critical than the camp he noted, because through the coaches, the educational process would be ongoing.  He said the plan is to do a similar program on Tortola and Virgin Gorda in the fall, to train more coaches, so that they can work with the children.

“We intend to keep the camp as a yearly enterprise, simply because it does so much for the children on Virgin Gorda and Tortola and the trainers in the United States, because they get to see a different view of the world,” he noted.

The way the camp is structured Polimo said, is that most of the camp concentrates on small module training, with different things on different days. He said sometimes it might be dribbling, other days it might be first touch, others second touch and especially for the younger children, a lot of it is just games, having fun and enjoying the atmosphere of what the camp brings, so that they have an enjoyable overview of what soccer is.

“Very often even in the States, too many of the camps are focused on training and the kids don’t have any fun or joy doing it and they don’t have fun or joy doing it, and it ruins their view of the game,” Polimo explained.  “Our goal is to make sure they have some fun along the way and they learn some technical things. We do nothing with tactics, all technique, technique, technique and we’ve had a wonderful response from the kids. And they feel special.”