I recently completed my week of Work Experience at Cricket Leinster with Naomi Scott-Hayward, who acts as the Cricket Development Officer for the South Dublin County Council area. Unluckily for me, it turned out to be only half a week of work, because of the code-red weather warning. Despite this, I really enjoyed my week, working in different schools around South Dublin.
Due to the ex-hurricane Ophelia, all schools and colleges were closed on my first day. This was unfortunate because I was due to coach a session with the 1st Year girls at Colaiste Bride in Clondalkin. Then I would have experienced the teacher education session for Table Cricket in Scoil Mochua, Clondalkin with Naomi and Diarmuid Lynch. Table Cricket is a version of cricket that is played on a table top and caters for children and adults, of many different abilities. Instead, I spent the day learning how to update and sort the main database of girls who are nominated by their clubs to play cricket in Leinster. I input data received from clubs and collated the new 2018 list of player.
When I heard the news that all schools were closed on Tuesday as well, due to the storm, I was disappointed. I was really looking forward to working with Fintan McAlister, the Dublin City Council ‘Cricket in the Community’ Development Officer, in the schools in his area. I realised just how dependant on weather schools cricket is. So, on Tuesday I went to a meeting with Naomi Scott-Hayward and Leinster Development Manager Brían O'Rourke instead. This gave me an insight into the many layers of work that is involved in the Development Officers job: schools, clubs, organising provincial sessions, coach education, council-run sports activities, facilities and equipment as well as inclusion cricket. After this, Naomi and I stayed on to talk about my upcoming few days of Work Experience, her expectations and details on who I would be working with.
On my first day of Work Experience at a school, I was with South Dublin community coach Diarmuid Lynch at St. Kilian's Junior National School for the morning and then to the senior school straight after. We started at9:30 with a group of young boys and girls. Skills that were taught to these groups were basic batting and bowling skills along with fun games. It was really important to keep the children involved so that they concentrated for longer, especially for the younger ages. We coached five classes, about 130 children from 2nd class and 4th class in the one day.
On Thursday, I went to St. Kevin’s NS, in Kilnamanagh. First, we were teaching at the girl’s school, and then the boy’s school. These were a bit older than the groups we were teaching at St. Kilian’s. They seemed to have a better grasp of the idea of the sport as they had sessions delivered by Leinster coaches over the last few years and some of the children from the two schools have played in Blitz competitions last year. In these sessions, the concept of running to score points was introduced.
On Friday, I was at Coláiste Bríde, Clondalkin to coach the 1st Year girls again with Naomi. In these sessions, we were working on the different types of catching – part of the fundamental movement skills in the Junior Cycle PE programme. As well as this, we showed the girls how to hold the bat correctly, and where to stand.
After this we went across the street to Scoil Aine Naofa, to work with 4th class, 5th class and 6th class girls. This is a feeder school for Coláiste Bríde. For these groups, we played a catching game at the start of each session, then into batting practise with the kids competing against each other to score the most amount of runs they could.
I really enjoyed my week of Work Experience with Cricket Leinster, and I felt privileged to be able to see all the work that everyone does first-hand. I’m now looking forward to helping out at school matches in the future and completing a coaching course as soon as I get a chance.
Beth Dimond
Loreto College, St.Stephen’s Green
4th Year Student