ATTENTION: IMPORTANT POST!!!!

Dear Korfballers, 

Please note that, UNFORTUNATELY, the sports hall in Écublens is closed during the school holidays, therefore it is inaccessible for us to use it for tonight's training session.

The next training session will be on the 27th of October of 2015.

KORFBALL in LAUSANNE & CIO PRESIDENT

What a great day!! It seems that he also had a good time playing with a handful of Dutch players and a couple of Catalans... Promoting Korfball in Lausanne is turning out to be a wonderful experience, and we enjoyed explaining the sport to many families today. Hundreds of Swiss people visited us, and learned about Korfball and had the chance to play it!!

A lot more pictures here!!

Korfball à la SEMAINE OLYMPIQUE - Du 11 au 15 octobre

KORFBALL in the Generation Games, 

as part of the Lausanne Olympic Week

Come, see and ENJOY

Korfball will be featured as part of the programme of the Generation Games from 11-15 October in Lausanne, the Olympic capital. The Games are organized in collaboration with the International Olympic Committee and the city of Lausanne to engage Lausanne citizens in a healthy lifestyle.

Besides the activities that we will organize, open to all children and parents, we will use the opportunity to make KORFBALL known to the citizens of Lausanne, and will try to generate more interest in the sport and especially to gain adepts. We will inform of the current initiative to start Korfball in Switzerland, and hopefully we will engage more participants to come to our training sessions (see KC LAUSANNE Info page).

There will also be three "exhibition" Korfball matches (demos), on Sunday 11th, with the participation of some of the world's best Korfball players coming all the way from the Netherlands.

The activities for participants will be very simple, just requesting to use the basic Korfball skills: only one team, passing the ball amongst its members, and moving quickly without it, no dribbling, no running with the ball, with the objective to score as many goals as possible in 4 minutes in the two korfs that will be on the pitch, one adult size and the other children size (Kangaroo korf). 

First Korfball Club in Switzerland!!!!

September 8th 2015, this is the date when the first Korfball Club was officially created in Switzerland. After a few weeks of practice in the shores of the Léman Lake, a handful of Korfball enthusiasts decided to make this first important step for the future of the sport in Switzerland.

With only four members participating in the first meeting of the Club, it was enough to approve the Statutes, unanimously. Also, the roles of President and Secretary were decided, and so ... KC LAUSANNE was born!!

Moment of the signature by President Geert Hendriks

President : Geert Hendriks

Secretary : Carles Albà

We have now established regular Korfball training sessions, which take place on Tuesday, every other week, from 20.00 to 21.00 at:

Salle de Gym du Collège Saturne
Route du Bois 6
1024 Ecublens

The upcoming dates are: 27 Oct, 10 Nov, 24 Nov, 8 Dec.

Please see the location on the map below for greater detail:
https://goo.gl/maps/ueh4xQUoWF12 

Follow this link to access the file containing the Statutes of KC Lausanne : STATUTES.

Champittet Summer Camp Korfball activites!!

During the past month of July, we were very pleased to organize some korfball activities for the children attending the Champittet Summer Camp. There were boys and girls from all around the world - Turkey, Italy, Jordan, Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, Greece and many other countries! The summer camp took place during the whole month of July; some children stayed there for only one week, while others came for two or three weeks or even one month. They were all between 11 and 16 years old, which we thought were good ages to work with.

We managed to organize a one-hour korfball practice session per week, during the first three weeks of the camp, so a total of three korfball introduction sessions. We did the activities outdoors since the weather was very nice. When we arrived, we were surprised to hear that nobody knew what korfball was and they had never heard about it, not even the supervisors. Therefore, we started with a 15-minute introduction to the sport, explaining a bit about the origins and the rules of korfball and about the particularities of this mixed gender team sport. All the children seemed very interested and curious about korfball and asked many questions related to this new sport.

Korfball is the only mixed gender team sport in the world!

Have you ever heard anything about korfball?

After that, we just gave the children six balls and allowed them to shoot freely from wherever they wanted, just to get them used to the sport. Then we began with some simple shooting exercises to get them all started. Since it was a group of around 16 children, very suitable for the type of activities we wanted to set up and for the matches at the end of the session, we divided them into two groups of eight, trying to have four boys and four girls in each group. We did a shooting practice game as a competition to motivate them even more to score. It was a bit of a mess at the beginning, because one person had to stay under the korf to take the rebound and pass it to the next, and the person who had shot had to stay to pick up the next rebound, so it was a bit confusing for them at first. But as they say, practice makes perfect, so after having done this exercise a few times they got better at it. 

After this little game we realized we were running out of time, so we proceeded with the matches at the end of the session. We divided the 16 children into four teams of four, trying to have two boys and two girls in each team, although this was difficult to achieve. While two teams were playing a match, the other two stayed on the other side of the court playing a game we really like, which is very helpful for children to learn the korfball rules: Two players start passing the ball between each other within a limited space, of course without running with the ball in their hands and without bouncing the ball. The rest of the players have to run around and escape from the two people with the ball, whose objective is to catch one of the running players and touch him/her with the ball (without throwing the ball at them). The "caught" players then have to join the "passing" players, so each time there are more and more players trying to catch the rest. 

Sometimes we did another game, called "the 10 passes". It starts with two teams, and the players in one team start passing the ball between each other (applying the korfball rules) until they manage to do 10 passes. The players in the opposite team have to try and intercept and steal the ball from the rival team and do the 10 passes themselves. Each 10 passes within a team count as one point, and the game continues so on.

Who's going to take the rebound?

The other two sessions were pretty much the same, because every week there were new children who had not been there the past sessions, and so we had to explain what korfball was all over again, trying to make the children who had experienced the past practices explain the rules themselves. Sometimes it was really hard to interact with the children because the activities took place in the evening during their free time and they were often tired and not willing to do anything so they started talking to each other. It was difficult to talk to them when they were not paying attention or making a lot of noise, but we could not be too strict with them because, after all, it was a summer camp where the children came to have fun, not a school lesson. 

If we had spare time at the end, we played one of our favourite games, CAOS, which the children really enjoyed. 

We had lots of fun organizing these korfball activities in the Champittet Summer Camp. Not only did the children travel back to their home countries with fresh knowledge about this brand new sport to them, but also the local supervisors discovered korfball, which might be very useful in the future!

Our next goal is to organize some korfball regular practice sessions at a local institution. 

See you soon!

Korfball at Champittet Open Doors!!

Dear korfballers,

On Saturday the 9th of May of 2015, we managed to organise a korfball introduction session at Collège Champittet, in Pully. Since it was the "Open Doors" day, many people including students, teachers and lots of parents came to visit the school.

Ready to start the day !

Our goal was to fit a korfball introduction session in the schedule of the day, to install all the necessary materials in the playground of the school (the weather was super nice) and to encourage the visitors to come and try korfball with us !
Even though Arnau and Marta only stayed in the morning, from around 9h30 to 12h45, the activity was very successful.

Well done !

First of all, we carried the korf (basket) and six balls up to the playground and we placed everything to get ready. People started to arrive at 10h00, but most people came to play korfball at around 11h00. At the beginning nobody seemed to come, but after a while, a group of five girls from the school and two little boys came to play korfball, and they seemed to like it ! 

Nice try !

Catch the rebound !

Since they had never played this sport, we had to explain the rules and show them how to throw the ball, but we were soon ready to start a match. Arnau and Marta played as well, and the match was very fun ! After that, we played a game we call CAOS, in which we lined up in a queue and the two first people had one ball each. Then they started shooting the ball and, if the second person scored first, then the first player was eliminated and passed the ball to the next. The game continued like that successfully, until only two people were left for the final. We played twice because they all seemed to enjoy the game, and they were very good at it !

Wow ! Nice shot !

Nice catch !

We had a great time at Champittet, even though we ended up exhausted because it was very sunny and we had played quite a lot. We really enjoyed playing korfball, and especially showing it to other students, teachers and parents ! Our next goal is to organise korfball activities in the Champittet Summer Camp this year !

Looking forward to that !

We're back in business!!

On the 27th of November of 2014, we were able to organise another korfball activity in the Lausanne area: Arnau and Marta carried out a korfball training session in Collège Champittet in Pully !

The "shooting technique" : Place your fingers as a triangle

We worked with a year-7 class during their 90 minute sports lesson, and our task was to introduce korfball to the children, do some warm up activities and finally try to organise a small 20 minute match. 

During the first 10 minutes of the session, we introduced korfball to the children. It was amazing to hear that not a single person knew what korfball was, which made our task much more passionate and interesting. 

Firstly, we explained how and where korfball is played as well as where it comes from, and we provided a brief description of the basic rules of the game. 

Boys vs Girls : "Boys on the right and girls on the left, quick !"

Secondly, we talked about our objectives regarding this sport and then we did a few warm up exercises and shooting practice activities to prepare the children for the final match. 
For instance, two queues were created in front of the korf, and both Arnau and Marta started from under the korf. As the exercise began, the first member of each queue on each side of the court had to run towards the exterior, towards the outer boundary lines. Then, each coach passed the ball to the person that had moved, and the latter had to throw the ball and try to score a goal. 
Once thrown, the two people under the korf had to take the rebound, trying to catch the ball before it bounced on the floor, and pass the ball to the two that had just thrown it, who would then run towards the korf and stay there for the next round.

Don't forget to catch the rebound !

Always start from behind the yellow line !

At the end of the session we organised a match, during which we were able to give some tips to the students about how to throw the ball and how to defend their opponents. We also did a small "extra" activity to show the students how to shoot penalties.

Team meeting before the start of the game...

And... off we go ! The game has started !

Overall, both Arnau and Marta had a great time organising this event and taking part in it. It was a pleasure to see that the children were having fun and enjoying this new game. Not only did the students play korfball, but also their sports teacher tried to shoot a couple of times. It is important for us to show teachers how to play as well, in order to assure future sustainability of the sport if we ever move from Switzerland. Both Arnau and Marta improved their coaching, communication and creative thinking skills, and were able to develop self-confidence, patience and taking initiative. The children also had a great time, learned the rules of a completely new sport to them and were physically active, which in turn improved their health ! 

Both coaches were very satisfied and felt very responsible throughout the session because they acted as teachers and had to make sure the children behaved appropriately and understood the basic rules. Undertaking new challenges and developing skills is always very fun and engaging !

Tiny discussion about korfball at the end... they seemed to like it !

Find more pictures here.

See you soon, korfballers !