"Beautiful Girls"-Coaching Stint In Myanmar Part 1

I was astonished when I received an offer via email to coach the Myanmar women team for the 27th SEA Games in Yangon, Myanmar. As from my previous experience coaching in Myanmar, there were no women hockey players in Myanmar. 

I replied to the email: do you have any women players and immediately I received a reply that there are many girls in the training camp eager to learn hockey".

Coaching a women's team was new to me and I felt uncomfortable taking up the job. With the encouragement and guidance from my friend, I flew to Yangon with an intention to learn to coach a women team.

Upon arrival, I was taken to my apartment which is near the Stadium. And with my eagerness to know the quality of players, I got ready and went straight to the ground to coach the girls.


My heart shattered seeing the speed of the players with and without the ball.
Since time is an essence I concentrated on three core basic skills, hitting, slap hit and push. For our aerobic fitness, every Saturday we do our runs around the beautiful lake Kandawgyi.


With the morning sun smiling at them, they just look great. Fortnightly we have breakfast together and occasionally apart from hockey training the team will enjoy some mini-games on the pitch. Whether you win or lose, everyone including the coaches enjoys ice creams with the vision of the sun setting.

I arrived in May, and have seven months to prepare the team for the SEA Games. Since time was an essence with the Sea games scheduled to start in December I start planning to have a team that can enjoy the game in the Sea Games.

Theinbyu hockey pitch the training ground for the team is located in the heart of Yangon city and sited along the Royal Lake(Kandawgyi Lake), Kandawgyi Natural Park, and walking distance to the magnificent Shwedagon Pagoda.

Since the sunrise at five in the morning, I will start my one hour walk then I will set the cones for all our training drills. Around  6.30am the players will be walking into the pitch with a stick and shoe in each hand which they took from the store.

I took the time to learn a few Myanmar words like "How Are You", "Thank You " and "Welcome" etc.

With my translator, I personally met each player to know their background and why they took up hockey.

Most of the girls are from a farming backgrounds. On why they took up hockey "they just want to be part of the SEA Games as this is a historical event for Myanmar, (first time hosting under the name Myanmar).

With this answer, How am I going to make them learn hockey when it's just participation for the girls?

After knowing them, and since beauty is associated with women, I drew a training program that I named "A beautiful Journey To The 27th SEA Games.

The word I commonly use to encourage the players in training was: beautiful shot, a beautiful pass, etc.

It's a joy seeing them enjoying hockey. In between training, I will put fun games to make every day a beautiful one.

Whenever there is time available the girls will do self-training to improve their basic skills.

In three months, I saw a vast improvement in their basic skills and speed with and without the ball.


to be continued in Part 2