Enjoy-A-Ball – a fun-filled multisport experience for children aged 3-9 years old, providing a foundation for growth and nurturing the love for sports.

Do you know how many things A B De Villiers can do besides playing cricket? He played in country’s junior Football team, Hockey, and Davis Cup Tennis; he also capped the skipper’s role in the junior rugby team, holds a record in school swimming competition, national U-19 badminton champion and had fastest 100m track race timing in South Africa’s junior athletics.

Legendary cricketer Vivian Richards represented Antigua national football team in 1974 World Cup qualification besides his great presence in West Indian cricket. So, we can call them extraordinarily talented persons or the multitaskers. Do we ever give a thought of whether our children can also become such multi-talented? Do we give a deep dive in screening their hobbies, their interest zone or do we simply impose our choices or our comforts onto them?

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FUNdamental – movement, sports and life – skills

Gayathri Ramesh, owner of the Chennai, Adyar franchise of ‘Enjoy-a-Ball’, enlighten us on this thought-provoking topic – how a child loves playing, not just Football or Cricket, but anything of choice.

Enjoy-a-Ball is working primarily to introduce children into sports at the age of three, so that they can find it interactive and exciting. The multi-sport coching academy nurtures the child between the age group of 3 to 9.

Enjoy-A-Ball was conceptualized with the motto of ‘FUNdamental – movement, sports and life skills – coaching’, with the objective of providing multi-sports coaching to kids and develop the confidence and skills to experience the joy of taking part in sport and being active for life.

The introductory levels are made in such a way, that it becomes memorable for kids, and then they gradually learn the different basic skills of ball sports.

At an early age group of 3-4, a child gets introduced to a sporting environment in a caring way. They learn many ball skills, movement skills, balance, co-ordination etc along with most important life skills. All the lessons are taught with plenty of creativity to engage the child and make their first experience in to sports a happy and memorable one. Slowly at around age 4, the kids are moved on to the next level, embark upon complex movement skills like running faster, dodging, hopping and skipping. Object control skills and stability skills are also pushed and expanded by introducing variations to – bouncing, throwing, catching, kicking etc. They also learn more spatial awareness game like predicting and intercepting the ball and the game. At the age of 5, they get introduced to different ball sports like Basketball, Baseball, Football, Hockey, Volleyball, Tennis, Rugby, Cricket, Handball, and Dodgeball. 

At Enjoy-a-Ball, the children also get skilled with the greater sporting values like sportsmanship, respect, decision making, goal setting and these soft skills becomes the part of the life, not just in sports but in shaping the personality.

The multi-sport academy provides single-hour coaching sessions for 3 different age groups in a week. A batch consisting of 12 or a smaller number of children get trained with coaches who are fun-loving, share a positive mind-set and expert to handle child behaviour.

Also Read: 5 Benefits of playing team sports

Play more than one sport

The Chennai branch has been operating from Adyar for the past four years, has never compromised children’s coaching by allowing the option of the different age group in a single batch, as, Gayathri believes when a lower age group child plays with elder age group, the confidence of the kid goes down and the seniors unnecessarily feel confident hampering the young age mind development.

Enjoy-a-Ball believes that the early age exposure to a single sport is not recommended, as with repeated practices of single sport and repeated injuries from an early age to teenage can bring roadblock to the young sportspersons, or the kid might get bored. So, having the knowledge of multi-sports may bring great options to choose.

According to Ms Gayathri, guardians of the early age groups sometimes insist for a single sport, what they aspire to see in their kid playing but the academy works to bring confidence and works to make kid mentally strong with multiple options open in front of them.

Even during covid-19 pandemic time, Enjoy-A-Ball ensures that the children do not miss on important physical and sports skills while being indoors by introducing ‘Enjoy-A-Ball @ Home program’. They had carefully curated their online lesson plans to unlock the lockdown days for the little ones with an action-packed evening while staying safe indoors.

Overall, Enjoy-a-Ball in India is working with a very unique idea to involve children at early age with sports. The physical and mental strengthening of a growing kid is a very crucial thing which we generally tend to ignore.

To know more about Enjoy-A-Ball, reach out to at info.india@enjoy-a-ball.com. or check out  https://enjoy-a-ball.com/india/