Footgolf

The word footgolf was created by joining two words, football and golf, specifically in a type of sport that Red Deporte has used to develop teamwork, amongst other skills, within a program aimed at promoting the NEET group -young people who are ‘Not in Education, Employment or Training’.

It is a group activity, which starts from questioning our individual role. We do this through a sports-games dynamic that’s developed on an 18-hole golf course with the distinctive feature that it’s played with a football and the holes are the size of this ball.

Red Deporte is placing footgolf as an ideal way of working towards a common aim, which each group has to define at the start of the activity. It’s not just their personal abilities that guide them, but their confidence in the group will also be decisive when it comes to achieving their collective aims.

Our group of young people, directed by Iván Ferrer (a Red Deporte collaborator in Catalonia) attended a golf course in a wooded area 30km away from Barcelona. All of the attendees were divided into five teams of four people. Each team defined its objective and named a captain, playing over seven holes. In each of them, elements were introduced that put to the test aspects such as adapting to change, trusting in the others and the team, prioritizing values, team commitment and defining group strategies. Once the game was finished the points were counted, the winning team being the one who made the fewest hits as a group to complete the seven holes. After the brief closing session led by Iván, the participants discussed the personal abilities that they had learned throughout the game.

The impact of the activity on the participants is evident through their comments after finishing the game: ’Trusting in people that I didn’t know’, ‘learning teamwork’, ‘I learned to lose’ or ‘I saw that it’s not always about winning’.