Both courses were held at the home of Football Federation American Samoa (FFAS) at Pago Pago Park and brought together participants from all over the small island nation.
A piece of history was made in the form of the first ever FIFA Grassroots course to be held in the United States territory and that milestone was swiftly followed by an OFC D Licence Part 2 Women’s Youth Coaching course, a follow up to the Part 1 equivalent run in Pago Pago last year.
FIFA Instrutor Nicola Demaine, who is also the OFC women’s development officer, conducted the D Licence course and was joined in running the grassroots event by OFC player development officer Daniel Shirley.
“Grassroots is the bloodline of all sports,” Demaine told the participants in her opening address prior to the historic FIFA Grassroots course.
“If you look at all the top athletes they all came from the grassroots levels that you will be teaching at.”
The goals of the gathering were to raise awareness of the importance of grassroots football and to equip the participants with the knowledge to organise age-appropriate activities for children aged six to 12.
Many of the participants were from clubs affiliated to FFAS while others were school teachers and similar leaders in the community.
They had the chance to put what they had learned into practice at the end of the four-day course when a festival involving local children was staged.
FFAS technical director Ruben Luvu assisted Demaine throughout the course and feels it was a great success.
“The coaches who attended now know what kind of activities and games to use for this age-group,” Luvu says.
“That will make our job a little easier when the players come up to the older age-group as we will not have to teach them the basics anymore.”
Luvu also gave Demaine a helping hand in the running of the D Licence course and was joined in doing so by the federation’s women’s development officer Naomi Oney and goalkeeper coach Uinifareti Aliva.
The D Licence is the first step on the OFC coaching accreditation pathway and is broken into two parts, Part 1 dealing with grassroots and Part 2 covering youth.
“The second part is focused mainly on those aged 12 to 19 and this means it deals with more complicated techniques as the age-group is a lot older than the grassroots level,” Demaine says.
“The task for the coaches is to challenge themselves as well as challenging the best players to be better. You can be the best player on the island but will that level compare competitively to the Oceania and worldwide levels?”
A total of 17 participants received their D Licence qualification at the end of the course and will look to continue on the pathway, which progresses through the various steps to an A Licence and covers all levels of the game.
For more on American Samoa football go to www.ffas.as

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