Football/Soccer Session (Beginner): Mavu: Circle of Friends

Circle of Friends™

Purposeful Play:

• Players stand in a circle. About ~1/3rd of the players run to a middle cone and change directions.
• Player then exchanges positions with someone on the outside with different greetings
• Examples: Giving a high-5 and shouting their name, giving a low-5 and shouting their favorite movie or shouting “Boom Shaka Laka” while bumping each other. Use your imagination!
• Coach will pause the game and quickly introduce new exercises (high knees, side-shuffle, skipping, pretending to be an animal, etc.) as well as a new exchange on the outside.

Purposeful Questions While They Are Playing - Ask Questions and Listen to Answers:

• Why do we play in a circle? What is different playing in a circle than in lines?
  • Potential Answer: In a circle there are no lines and everyone can see each other.
• How can we fix the game if it slows down because less people are in the middle?
• What can we do to keep the circle even and closed at all times?

Purposeful Play - Use Your Imagination or Our Suggestions to Create New Ways of Playing:

• Introduce wildly different movement patterns or actions for the players do while in the middle.
• After playing this warm up a few different days, start to ask for 2-3 of the players to think of their own movement and exchanges for the group to follow.

Purposeful Questions After the Game - Ask Questions and Listen to Answers:

• What are you learning about each other, about your community?
• Why is it important to use your voice?
  • Potential Answer: To gain confidence, practice using your voice helps you solve problems in life. 
• Be imaginative. Try your own questions and encourage the group to ask their own questions.

CoF - Large Group

This animation illustrates how the activity looks with multiple players moving simultaneously.  The rules remain the same.  The runner moves to the middle, changes direction, finds a partner on the outside, uses their voice and performs a greeting, and then they switch.

Coaches should aim to have approximately 35% of the circle actively moving at any one time (for a group of 20, you should have 6 or 7 children moving into the middle to start the activity).  Circle of Friends can work with very small groups and extremely large groups just by adjusting the number of children moving at the beginning.