‘Seychelles’ Special Olympics coaching impressive’ |28 November 2009

The Special Olympics Africa programme development manager, Kenyan Joe Mutua, said this to Sports Nation on Thursday afternoon at the Stad Popiler as coaches and athletes took part in a special event.

Mr Mutua added that Special Olympics Seychelles has been around for 23 years and has been making good progress.
 
“It’s not a big programme due to the small population of Seychelles, but the quality of training has been one of the most impressive in Africa,” he said.

“There are countries with more athletes but their quality of training is not as good as in Seychelles. Even before coming here, I knew that the quality of training and the competitions have been very impressive,” added Mr Mutua.

“Training here is conducted very well. The programmes are followed to the letter. If it was not for the small population, we could have seen one of the largest programmes in Africa. What is really important is not the number of people but the quality, which is quite high here.”

Mr Mutua said they have covered enough to enable the coaches to organise training and run competitions.
“Everything went on according to plan and we covered all the topics of the programme. All is well,” he added.

Among the topics covered are the history of Special Olympics, the organisation and who take part in the games, the definition of intellectual disability, the unique aspects of Special Olympics, divisioning (theoretical and practical), track and field training, event planning and event staging.

“The participants are very enthusiastic and they have good coaching qualities,” noted the Kenyan expert.
Thursday’s event gave those who followed the course an opportunity to organise an event and put into practice what they have learned. They later received their certificates.

Mr Mutua said he started as a volunteer coach in Kenya before becoming Special Olympics Africa’s programme development manager. His main areas of work are coach training and administration.

Seychellois Collin Quatre, the Special Olympics Seychelles national director, also ran the course aimed at giving coaches knowledge, special skills and understanding to be able to train intellectually disabled athletes.

G. G.