(S30) PT 1 - Going International

[ComebackZak]

PBE Affiliate

[huck24]

SHL affiliate

[SDCore]

SHL PT Claim

[Bauer]

PBE CW

[bex]

While the league has been working with various countries to make football connections, they’re certainly not the only ones working to spread a love of the game. Recently, Raeni Clarke was able to partner with Marcella Toriki and her charity Girl Strong to conduct a series of football clinics across Toriki’s home country of New Zealand. This was Raeni’s first time leaving the country outside of her travels to London and Tijuana for DSFL games, and her first time spending any extended time outside of the US. She was really excited to see somewhere very different from her normal, an opportunity she would never have been able to have without her career as a professional athlete. She was also very honored to get to stand aside her mentor to host these clinics, as she has a huge amount of respect for Marcella. It was a beautiful chance to celebrate her own young career as well, as Raeni was able to stand as an example of what is possible in the world of the ISFL. She had a great time connecting with young people who were interested in the sport, and managed to go see some sights in her down time. As a closet Lord of the Rings fan, she took a solo trip to hit up some of the filming locations. She’s excited to stay connected with some of the amazing New Zealanders she met through letters and social media!

[SchoolboyShue]

PBE

[LimJahey]

PBE Championship Week

[dogwoodmaple]

SHL affiliate

[Bigred1580]

Last season the Baltimore hawks had a tough one, only winning three games, but it was still better than some expected.  Going into this season, we know we are getting better, so we want to grow our fan base to go along with our rising talent. Part of this strategy meant reaching out to other parts of the world trying to build not only our Fan base, but also football as a whole. We did this by sending all of our players to different countries around the world to hold camps teaching them football 101 and a general love for the game and for the hawks! We sent players everywhere, but Since North America, Europe, and Australia have DSFL and/or ISFL representation, we focused a lot of resources on Asia, Africa, and South America. These places hear football and think of the sport we call soccer. 

Notable players included Dante king headed to South Africa, Chunt the badger in Ghana, bush geese in North Korea (explains his temporary disappearance), jellyfish in Brazil, Gimmy went to DC (it was the furthest he could go that we would trust him), parker to DC (ok we didn’t really trust him), woody went to Russia, Gallagher India, Tomas New Zealand, Zellos China, and I went to Japan as part ambassador to the Tokyo Olympics. We had a lot of attendance at these camps, teaching the rules, and the basics and showing them some of the exciting aspects of Dot football. Time will tell is this program we developed helps the league grow in popularity, but based on the reception, I know the hawks have quite a huge following coming.

[Sermokala]

Chainbreaker went back to his home nation of Argentina to do a workshop for football as he was well known in the country and with a very large focus on soccer there had to have been some amount of talent that wouldn't fit into the mold of soccer but was still fast and athletic enough for football. A lot of very large boys grow up to be too large and can't adapt to their new size with the ball. Most players of football however don't need to interact directly with the ball so running a number of drills that can directly translate to football skills are almost already baked into them. Being able to then throw yourself into people isn't even a wildly nessisary skill as any sort of impedment is effective enough to begin the investment of more technical skills in tackling. the easiest workshop skill is weight lifitng and mass building. it is always extremly dangerous to lift serious weights and a lot of dangerous advice is out on the internet to fool people into doing even more dangerous methods of weight lifting. After this a day or two to give people proper instruction for how to set up and other things to practice would give them a massive step up in order to help people make the transision to college football in north america.