Hebe Jebes Issue Sep to Oct 2013 Sep 2013 | Page 24

NEWS

Dragons: training session
Words Gregoire Bourrut Lacouture
You may wonder what our Dragons are up to
on Wednesday afternoons and all day Saturday
instead of doing their homework! They are not just
playing on the water as one might imagine, they are following their
coach ‘Alfy’ and if they want to reach the elite, they have to practise.
Hebe Jebes asked Alfred to give us a summary of last season’s
training sessions and as you can see, it’s been a lot of hard work!
Getting children to settle into training
By the end of summer last year, we had already identified future
top sailors who had the potential to join the Hebe Dragons’ team
which at that time had only two sailors. We managed to get a big
group of sailors interested and we invited them to come and try
race training. Within a few weeks, the numbers dropped as many
kids preferred a more relaxed sailing experience, and others did
not have time due to other commitments.
For those who remained, the next challenge was to answer
questions from parents on what race training is all about and how
things work on and off the water.
Start practising
By mid-October, the seven Optimist sailors were happy and
the parents were mostly satisfied with my answers about the race

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