By Issabella Narapal
PNG Hekari Football Club’s development pathway program, known as Hekari Football Academy, is running training sessions every Saturday at the PNG Football Stadium.
The two-hour training session starts at 7am with core sessions on interactive warm-ups, basic technical skills (dribbling, passing, and shooting), teamwork, discipline, and friendly mini-matches.
The academy is coordinated by the renowned technical director Jerry Sam. He is in charge of designing the curriculum and establishing standardized age-specific training routines for the academy. Meanwhile, the coaching staff for the academy includes the PNG Hekari FC players, both boys and girls.
The PNG Hekari FC General Manager, Wira Wama has highlighted that the Academy trains and develop children aged 4 to 17 years old, with different division categories, separating players into specific developmental age groups.
“We placed them in age group such as age 4 to 5 in one group, age 6 to 7 in another group and so on to age 17,” Wama said.
“Each age group has different skill practice like age 4 and 5 focuses on early interactive warm-ups, introducing children to coordination games. For age 10 and 11, they learn basic skill stations including essential soccer passing and kicking drills. After that when they reach age 14, 15, 16 and 17, they will transition toward structured tactical matches, building paths for tournament preparation.”
He added that to regionalizes football talent, the academy began transitioning into a nationwide program, reaching Vanimo, Kokopo and Mt. Hagen.
Meanwhile, the Hekari Academy has been operating for years now and the measure of its success is highlighted by home-grown talents like Joseph Joe and Nelson Karaun, who started from the academy and successfully progressed all the way into the senior professional players of Papua New Guinea.
Wama reaffirmed the academy’s core goal of building sustainable player pathway to elevate Papua New Guinean football to regional and international standards.
“Now we have a professional club as our first team now. As we proceed, we have A team. And then we have B team which is our Premier Soccer League team and then we have all the youths so now we are coming down all the way to academy.”
“We’re going to select those we think they’ll make it to the academy and go further and will take all their data and then we develop them until they reach our A team or we can send them to other clubs and give them opportunity overseas.” Wama Said.
Apart from building football talent, the Academy also emphasized on building children in positive environment and nurturing good citizens of Papua New Guinea. The Academy sessions remain completely free of charge for children in consideration for economic barriers and welcomes anyone who want to join.
