When the founding president of OTA, Joseph A.B Oyebog arrived Cameroon November 04th 2015, without even dropping off his bags in the bedroom, he went straight to the Bonaberi wall, hit with a few kids accompanied by a few close OTA coaches, and called for a meeting with all the OTA staff to be scheduled within the next 48 hours.
As always, everyone was present, the message was very simple, « I have come to work, and to work very hard, I hope you all will follow with the same intensity that you have for the past 17 years, with or without financial constrains…… there was a very big tension in the air which one could virtually touch, but the feedback was unanimous, « yes we shall follow« …..
Both Simo and coach Hapi, two elders in the program had sat Joseph down and talked about the need to down size Souza, to their greatest surprise, their suggestion was embraced very easily…. « yes, we need to, Heidi Kaess on numerous occasions has brought this up to me, and some key board members of OTA (USA) think so, a lot of us would like to see Souza complete in our life span……..«
Everyone was delighted to work with a more flexible Joseph, but when Joseph revealed the 2015/2016 work scheduled and events, the biggest question was out there…….. With very limited resources, how could we handle so many activities in such a short time? Joseph`s response, « through faith« .
On the menu;
· Five pre-season planning meetings
· Participation in Ebolowa tournament
· Participation in Douala youth tournament by MIMA
· Exhibition with Yannick Noah
· Participation in Yaounde tournament by the presidential guard.
· Participation in the end of year Masters in Douala.
· Meeting president Alima in Kribi
· Coaches seminar 2015/16 in Douala
· Christmas holidays camp
· Opening of the highly anticipated high performance training camp.
All of these to be done by January 3rd 2016 while construction works are still going on in Souza and container release negotiations and works are in the oven. No one could see how this is possible, but here we are January 3rd and it’s all happened very smoothly.
It was a very sensational event. All 40 kids were present , there was a briefing with all the coaches 30 minutes before the first session, 15 minutes before starting was a warm-up(stretching session) led by coach Simo. After, all coaches assembled on court number two, and players were allocated to different courts with their coaches of the day. After two hours of various drills, a physical condition drill was held. Lunch was served and there was a photo shot session at break time. Later matches were held. Hubert (one of the top African star cadet player currently based at ITF center in Togo was present at the session and lost to Bonaberi`s PINCEWILL)…..matches went on until about 9:00pm. The coaches held a meeting to assess their effort at the end of the day session 1:00am -3:30am and it was all thumbs up!!!
Stay tuned …….
