Oleg Kaljurand: We will not stop the classes!

Recently, Baltic Fut­sal Mar­ket­ing com­pany presen­ted to the reader the first fut­sal school in Esto­nia, which has the main goal namely pro­mo­tion of the sport in the coun­try and the upbringing of high-qual­ity fut­sal play­ers, start­ing from child­hood.

Moreover, we reminded par­ents that it is fut­sal with its spe­cifi­city, that helps young pupils of foot­ball schools to est­ab­l­ish both gen­eral coordin­a­tion and tech­nique of ball hand­ling. Today we con­tinue our con­ver­sa­tion about the school of FC Cos­mos regard­ing today’s unfa­vor­able real­it­ies. COVID-19 and reg­u­lar exer­cise. How is this even pos­s­ible? Our inter­locutor is the head coach of the school, Oleg Kaljur­and.

— The school has announced the recruit­ment of young pupils into groups of 5-7 years old, but the situ­a­tion with the coronavirus may pre­vent this. What will hap­pen after par­ents enroll their chil­dren and require classes?

— First, we will wait for the author­it­ies to decide on restric­tions, and then we will make a deci­sion. In any case, we have exper­i­ence in con­duct­ing classes in condi­tions of par­tial and com­plete quar­ant­ine.

— Please, share with us.

— Every­one who is already train­ing at our school today has gone through all kinds of restric­tions. When there were restric­tions on the num­ber of pupils and the social distance, we divided the group into two or three groups and made sure that, firstly, they did not over­lap, and secondly, that within the groups the guys worked at the pre­scribed distance. This influ­enced game interac­tions, but it’s a coach’s job to come up with an inter­est­ing workout that will not allow foot­ball play­ers to get bored without close con­tacts.

— And regard­ing the ban period on sports events?

— In quar­ant­ine, we con­duc­ted classes online. On the same train­ing days, the chil­dren were given tasks to per­form a tech­n­ical set of exer­cises. In addi­tion, they had a decent phys­ical activ­ity. All of this was con­trolled through the Zoom plat­form.

— What equip­ment was used and how many chan­deliers, mir­rors and other table lamps were broken?

— The equip­ment was the simplest: a jump rope, a ball (num­ber three, light­weight) and prefer­ably a mat to exer­cise. And in order to main­tain order in every house, we asked our little ath­letes to remove all unne­ces­sary things and to clear the «work­ing area» as much as pos­s­ible. Up to the point that we asked them to take off their socks if the apart­ment had par­quet on the floor.

Valery Chu­machenko
PR Dir­ector of Baltic Fut­sal Mar­ket­ing