Get On Side Rugby with Karen

get2gether’s Young People Ambassador Karen blogs about her recent Get On Side Rugby experience: 

From Tries to table discussions, from strategy to self directed support – the last seven weeks certainly haven’t been boring. As part of Get On Side’s Rugby course – a seven week training course looking at Self Directed Support, and how we can use that in our everyday lives – we learnt that we can apply the same logic to learning something new like rugby for example.

Karen talking about her experience

Week One we got to know everyone involved, talked about some of our achievements, why we joined the course and what we hoped to get out of it. The course is in two halves, the first half is classroom based talking and discussions, and the second half is taking what we have learnt that week and applying it to the game of rugby. We were lead out to the pitch where the Scotland National team trained before leaving for their World Cup tour. On the pitch we learnt some of the passing drills and the rule of “pass back to go forward” in other words you throw the ball to team mates behind you in order to move towards the try line.

On the second week we covered decision-making and making better choices about our life and what we wanted to do, we transferred this to the pitch learning how to tell our team mates what we wanted them to do

Week three we covered how to get support and tell people what we wanted to happen in our own lives. We played our first game of tag rugby and met Richie Vernon a Scotland world cup player.

Week four we looked at working as a team to make choices that help each other. Another game of tag rugby applying what we learned in the first half.

Week five was the taking control and better organisation week, were we learnt how to give orders and plan for our lives.

Week six was the giving of the four self-directed support options. More tag rugby, then a guided tour of Murrayfield Stadium, which was amazing giving that Scotland were still in the World Cup, this added an amazing buzz.

Week seven we had a game of tag rugby, a buffet lunch and our graduation ceremony, where we invited friends, family and people who support us to come along and see what we achieved. We said our goodbyes to the new friends we made. Thank you to everyone who made the course possible and I will take the skills I have learnt and apply them to all areas of my life.

Karen’s team mate Ryan being interviewed about his views on the programme