▲ The participants are listening to the head coach’s explanation carefully of how to keep their positions. They will play a real match after the lecture. /Photograph by Kim You-jeong  
 
  Dongguk University Sports Team has been running a football class for all Donggukians regardless of gender. Kim Jong-pil, who was a formal professional soccer player and now working as a head coach of Dongguk Soccer Team, leads the class as head director and main instructor.  The class is held every Tuesday and Thursday at 6 P.M. and continues for ninety minutes regularly at Main Stadium. For the first twenty minutes, the head coach explains the skills used in real soccer matches. After the explanation, students make teams and apply skills that they have learned. Dongguk University Sports Team plans to gather about hundred students at maximum and nearly ninety students applied for the program already, according to An Jae-bong, the Chief of Dongguk University Sports Team. He said, “Until now, we have only focused on students who want to play sports professionally. This class is the first step for us to open programs for amateur students who are eager to learn professional skills from experts. As an experimental class, we will try to fix problems occurred during the term.”  The students who are participating in the program are showing positive reactions. One of the participants, Kim Jong-yoon, majoring in Business Administration, said, “As we are not professionals, it is difficult to learn tactics used during the professional matches. It is a good chance for us to learn professional skills. The explanation is easy to understand for those who have just begun to play soccer.” He also added, “With the head coach’s explanation, we have learned specialized knowledge about soccer. Moreover, watching soccer matches on TV has become more interesting because I have professional acquaintance of soccer.” Yang Su-ji, who majors in Food Industrial Management, said, “I have an interest in soccer so I like to watch soccer matches. As a female, I needed a big courage to participate in this program. Running in the field and exercising is really meaningful to me by itself. There is no cost for the class. There are only five or six female players. I hope more female students to participate in the program.”  Despite the positive comments, there are also some problems that arise. As the soccer class starts late at night, the given time to use the field is limited. There are few lamps that cover only the half of the field. Baek Jung-hoon, an alumnus of Dongguk, said, “We need more time to play soccer. It would be better to have lamps lighting up the whole field. In addition, the size of field is a little bit smaller than the official size.” Kim Jong-pil also spoke about the needs of  improvement. “It would be much better if there were shower room and locker room. Now students put their belongings on the stand.” He also added, “Speaking about the program itself, it is very important that students spend time to share memories together. After the frame of the program is fixed, I have a plan to enlarge its scale and interact with other universities’ soccer classes. Therefore, we need more support from the school and interest from students as well.”  The program is taking new members for the second semester in June. The head coach added that he hopes the program to extend to other sports such as basketball and baseball in the near future.
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