Qatar- Aspire Academy concludes Gold Camp

(MENAFN - The Peninsula) Doha: Aspire Academy conducted the final stage of the year-long assessment process from which student-athletes join the worldrenowned institution of youth sports development. The students are selected over two days, from March 23 and 24. Known as Gold Camp and falling under the Talent Identification Programme, the assessment saw 40 young Qatar residents eager to join the Academy undergo a range of set exercises, drills, and challenges design to give coaches and staff a holistic picture of each athlete. The Gold Camp represents the third step of Aspire Academy's comprehensive talent scouting system starts with assessing over 4000 Qatari boys from all across the country by the team from Aspire Academy Talent Identification department. During visits to government and Independent schools in the ‘Bronze Camp, the numbers are further cut down in the second stage known as Silver Camp Testing. From the 40 boys who made it to Gold Camp and just under half of that number of the top performers, they will join Aspire Academy for the new academic year in September 2021. Speaking on the last day of Gold Camp, Ross Jeffs, Aspire Academy Sprint and hurdles coach, explained some of the new things included in this year's camp, 'On day one we started with some coaching activities which gave us a chance to see what the boys are like in a coaching environment, their coach-ability and how they interact with each other and react to coaching cues. On day two, we introduced the competitions environment for the first time in Gold Camp and had the boys compete in throws, 60m sprint, long jump, and endurance. This will enable us to compare them with our current Development 1 and 2 student-athletes and see how they fare, and collecting such details and information is part of the progress necessary to coaching and development. Adel Mouelhi, Aspire Academy senior multi-events coach, how the pandemic impacted the programme. 'Although we will choose the best 12 to 15 boys from this lot, we have purposed to look beyond just the selected. For the boys who are not chosen this time and for those who would like to stay in sports and continue doing athletics, we want to start a parttime programme run and managed in-house by Aspire. 'Who knows maybe these boys who didn't make the grade this time will get better than the boys we choose therefore we want to work with them and keep an eye on them for it is possible that in year 8 9, or 10 we could invite them back to join Aspire Academy. However, starting this part-time programme depends very much on this pandemic, but we would like to do this, said coach Adel Mouelhi.MENAFN27032021000063011010ID1101818714