She paces up, then down on the touchline demarcated by field markers giving instructions, it’s a sunny Saturday afternoon, hot for that matter. Her jacket strapped on her waist, a whistle hanging from her neck, and a black cap on her head holding her dreadlocked hair on the back strap. Phoebe Kariuki, the U-11 soccer assistant coach at Kahawa Sportive Soccer Academy is overseeing a defensive drill with one defender in each team in a five-aside set-up.Coach Phoebe, as they fondly refer to her, has been volunteering at the academy in her capacity for the past one year and she enjoys every bit of it and has done it religiously, not even the English game pitting Manchester City and Chelsea, or that of Manchester United and Aston villa will sway away the Manchester United fan this specific Saturday afternoon.She commands respect from the young and aspiring players, and in return, she equips them with football knowledge and other valuable life lessons.Apart from volunteering at Kahawa Sportive Soccer Academy, Phoebe serves as the assistant coach also at NextGen Multisport Academy where she has been since September 2020.She is a recent graduate in Bachelor of Science, Exercise and Sports Science from Kenyatta University and has taken it upon herself to share her knowledge constructively and watch it grow, literally.Born and bred in Karatina, the multi-talented coach also plays for Kenyatta University’s Desert Roses and is a level III certified referee, meaning she can whistle through matches in the branch and sub-branch levels.She derives her motivation and inspiration from her coach at Desert Roses, Caroline Ajowi, owing to the steps that she is making in growing the women’s game in the country.Ajowi, a former Harambee Starlets player and a Rising Starlets coach, also took the same course and is a Sports tutor at Kenyatta University.Growing up, Phoebe was mostly about football but she also had a strong case in other sports including basketball and racket games, a connection that in a way led her to studying a bachelor’s degree in Exercise and Sports Science but she did not picture herself as a coach back then.All she wanted to do was Law but as the love for sports grew, that for Law also grew but in an inverse manner. And it dwindled eventually.In high school, the fifth-born in a family of six used to play basketball and it is at this moment that her coach at Tumutumu Girls, Mr Robert Gatoho, implored her to give a thought at the program offered at Kenyatta University as he thought it would come in handy for her with her special liking for sports, and true to his word, Phoebe joined the university in 2016 for the exact course and explains the details in delight.“It entails all the sports and in addition to that, there is anatomy, first aid, physiotherapy, and biomechanics. Basically, understanding sport by knowing how the human body operates and how one is able to impact performance by use of technology. It also helps one know how to deal with injuries in performance sports. It is a wide course that gives you the upper hand in understanding, first, the person performing the sport, the sport itself, and how to be able to create a whole athlete in all aspects. You get to know how to perform them, how to coach them also, and in the end it is all about how you are able to bring out the best performance in an athlete per sport,” Phoebe explains.In addition to that, her coursework in physiotherapy comes in handy when it comes to managing players with injury as well as in planning training routines that will be fit for specific age groups and not result in injuries.While in the third year, enjoying her football and captaining the university team, the multi-faceted Phoebe took it upon herself to help her coach arrange the field for training to learn the itty-bitty details and that sparked her interest in coaching further.Not only did she help the coach in the small details but also led training sessions when the coach was absent, and by doing so she was carving a niche for herself.That coaching spark in 2018 ignited a fire in her that has been burning and propelling her since then, and she started being intentional about it, attending coaching workshops and even requested her coach to let her lead some sessions.She is set to add to her knowledge the relevant papers by undertaking an FKF CAF coaching course in the coming days.“I will be doing the FKF CAF D course, which is the basic level, in October to enhance my coaching knowledge as well as start my journey in getting the required papers to coach at advanced levels,” she said.Coaching at the Junior level has not all been rosy as she has had a couple of challenges in her budding career with kids.Kids can be rebellious and bully at the same time, and that is something that Phoebe has to know how to handle as she dispenses her knowledge to the young ones.To her, it remains to be one of the biggest challenges as she has to strike a perfect balance to help the child, get to the root cause of the problem, and keep them yearning to come back for the next session.“They are still discovering themselves, their bodies. There is a lot going on around them both at home and at school therefore sometimes you find that a child is very rebellious which could be occasioned by a problem either at home or at school. You have to keep such a player very close because you don’t want to lose them or have them be a distraction to the entire team,” “You have to make them your friend so that they may be open to talk to you and solve issues. There are different characters, the soft ones who do not want to talk a lot and those who want to be heard and seen. At times, the vocal ones will try to bully the soft ones and that is something that we have to learn to solve also. At times, we just let them solve it by themselves and if they do not get to the bottom of it, we formulate ways to help them solve the issue. Football is a team sport so we all have to be headed towards the same direction,” she clears.On the areas that they focus more on during training, phoebe highlights that they differ depending on the age group, and continues to give a detailed explanation.“For the kids, there is a certain focus on different age groups. Below 13 years, we are more on technical but around that age, we introduce some bits of tactical aspect and start introducing some bits of physical. Below 15 years the focus is on their technical and some bits of tactical aspects so that by the time they get to 16 years you are not dealing with basic things that they should have learnt in the earlier groups,” she details.Phoebe reveals that she receives a lot of criticism from people who do not understand her line of work, more so because people her age are looking for jobs while she is volunteering as a football coach. However, according to her, volunteering is an anchor to what she wants to achieve in the long term.Already, Phoebe feels that she has played a role in the correct upbringing of children through sports.She notes that such programs give kids the platform to learn a couple of things including how to interact with others and how to relate with other people resulting in behavioural change.In the end, kids have to enjoy themselves in order to learn, according to Phoebe.“If you do not let the kids enjoy themselves, they will get bored. Fun and enjoyment come first in our sessions, then from there they will build the passion for the sport.” She finishes.
