Day 3 Parts 3,4,5..... Just 4 Keepers in the House!!

After thanking Coach Fortran again! I told him I had to run to get to another convention highlight..... although this one was not directly related to the NSCAA convention. I was headed to meet Just 4 Keepers founder Ray Newland, J4K Washington, Stephen Swanger and J4K Toronto, Canada, Roy Howell and his coaching partner from the Mustangs, Omar Jbaihi for some drinks and an unofficial J4K meeting. I have Skyped with these guys several times, and I had met Stephen face to face on Wednesday, but I was looking forward to meeting Ray and Roy for the first time and get pumped up for J4K and talk game plans for future business opportunities to help every keeper we can!!

From left to right: Prince Knight, Roy Powell, Ray Newland, Omar Jbaihi, Stephen Swanger

It was great to hang out with Ray, Roy Steve and Omar. The five of us  had a good time laughing about various stories and come to find out that Ray has really good (make that bad) sense of humor! If you get a chance to meet him, make sure he tells you a joke! We did talk quite a bit of business. J4K has a great future and we are in the process of taking the USA by storm! 5 State Directors and almost 40 Goalkeeper coaches across the country including Hawaii (yep, Hawaii....wanna go?). Steve and I also had a chance to discuss further details regarding our joint venture of taking US goalkeepers to UK this summer on a GoPlay Sports Travel Package and a J4K residential camp. It is going to be a great opportunity for the keepers that join in on the adventure! (wanna go?)

Steve had to get back to the exhibitor hall, Ray had a meeting to get to, I wanted to catch a Futsal session and Roy and Omar were going to do some downtown LA shopping for their wives. So we agreed that we would meet back up for dinner at 9pm.

Coach Park working with U16 Girls on the Futsal court

If you remember last year's convention, one of the poor sessions occurred on the Futsal court. Well shall we repeat that? I wanted to see if my Scottish coach, Donald Park, Head of Coach Education, Scottish FA could be more impressive on the court than he was in his lecture....... IMO, he was not. I'm not sure why he, or his counterparts, or NSCAA could run an effective session with U16 girls dealing with 'movement to find your striker' on a Futsal court playing 6 v 6?! A Futsal court is designed for 5 v 5 and trying to find space was next to impossible let alone trying to move and pass with a purpose to find your striker. To make matters worse, coach Park stopped the session way too much, so the girls could not get into any type of rhythm and they also had difficulty understanding him. But it was a required practical session for the Special Topics Diploma - Advanced Youth Coaching, so I watched and continued to critique.
 
Headed back to the exhibit hall to talk with some more vendors about goals for NSSC and a few other small guys before the exhibit hall closed up at 5pm. Decided to go back to the hotel, freshen up, change and get ready to go out with the J4K guys.

I wish that I could tell you that the five us went wild and crazy in LA, and yes we drank and had a good time!, but the truth is, after a good Mexican dinner, we went to an Irish pub, found that it had turned into an LA 90's dance club, loud and jam packed with all sorts of people! We had one drink each and determined it was time to call it a night a little after midnight. Guess we are getting too old to go romping around downtown! As long as I'm not too old to play competitive soccer twice per week and then have tons of fun with kids on the field!!!

Let's get on to Saturday!