After a long time, and when finally the worldwide pandemic situation has allowed us to do so, B1 Camp Fort Myers, Florida is back. The last two editions took place in May 2019 and November 2019, but finally, the B1 Coaches have been able to travel to the B1 Camp.
The coaches of B1 Spain, Eric Bertran, and Marc Fortuny traveled last Thursday, April 28th to carry out the B1 Camp, but also to prepare a training for the new coaches of B1 USA and to discover new talents in the tryouts.
The Spanish coaches were joined by Sergio Alfaro, Director of the project B1 USA in Florida, and Daniel Hostettler, Director of Operations. We were also fortunate to have Edgar Garcia as our assistant. Edgar had been a player at our academy in Fort Myers and had also joined our academy in Barcelona for about 2 years, just before traveling to Mexico to play for a professional team. Taking advantage of his vacation, he came to pay us a visit to enjoy soccer with B1.
It was a pleasure for Eric and Marc to meet most of the players that they mainly see in images. So on top of the excitement to carry out the soccer clinics, there also was the desire to interact with the young talented players of the USA Academy. In fact, the players and the parents succeeded in giving the Coaches a warm welcome.
The B1 Camp
The B1 Camp was divided into 2 days. On the first day, Saturday, the planning was to run the Camp for 1:30h with the first category of players from U9 to U12. Following this session should have been implemented another 1:30h intensive training but for the higher category (U13 to U19). Unfortunately, the heavy rain and lightning warnings meant that the second training got canceled but postponed to the next day.
The coaching staff was able to implement a refreshing style of training with exercises that the players were not used to interacting with. Indeed, Marc and Eric were able to bring their Spanish influence and knowledge of football to the Fort Myers fields.
Everyone had a great time, the coaches were able to work in a positive environment with players from the B1 Academy as well as players from outside. All the players were paying attention and actively learning.
On the second day, similar sessions were carried out for both categories. Of course, the oldest category trained twice to make up for the day before. 3 hours non-stop. The intensity was still high and the players were hungry to learn making it easy for our coaches to carry out the sessions.
Committed players
Finally, B1 wanted to reward those players that gave it all and were showing their hard work during those two days. Some Puma accessories were given out to three players of each category. For the youngster category, Noah Woncheck, Adrian Isakov, and Aiden Lee were the chosen ones, congratulations! Furthermore, for the oldest category, Bryce Moonshower, Derek Johansson, and Kadin Deriso stood out and impressed the coaches!
In general, our coaches and the B1 Academy itself are happy with these two days of the B1 Camp. The coaches from Spain got to know the players that have been fighting for the B1 colors but on a different continent. The sessions got carried out properly and everyone seems to have learned something.
A nice experience that we hope to repeat more often so that the kids of the academy and all those who want to, can discover the demands of B1 training in Spain and how a well done job can help them in the future.
