The campaign encourages children to be active for at least an hour each day, addressing findings by the World Health Organisation that four in five children globally do not do enough physical activity.
Players, students, and teachers during the training session (photo: FIFA)[Missing Credit]
Alan Liff, one of the students who shared the pitch with the Swiss stars, said that “it was just great to meet all of them, and to see for myself what the next level is”.
“It was great to meet such humble, nice men,” he continued. “You do not get to meet the Swiss national team, ever – these guys are going to be playing on live television, billions of people are going to be watching them, so it was great to see them, see how they train and get to know them.
“I feel like when I am on the pitch and running and just feeling the wind, feeling the grass; it just makes me feel happy.”
Shelly Moses, associate head of the lower school, echoed his comments, saying that “the World Cup is the biggest sporting event in the world, so for FIFA and the Swiss team… to give us the opportunity to come and interact with the team, and do some drills, is an amazing experience that our students are going to remember for the rest of their lives”.
“If students have the opportunity to regularly exercise, then they do better all around,” she continued. “They can think and work better in a classroom, they can collaborate better with each other and solve problems together.
“To be active, you just have to find what is fun for you, or your child – soccer, gardening or dance – then it is fun and something that your child wants to do. Brain research shows that children who exercise, especially for 60 minutes a day, have their brain development and learning positively impacted.”
Swiss midfielder Granit Xhaka signs autographs for students (photo: FIFA)[Missing Credit]
The school itself has three sections: an early childhood centre, the Golda Meir lower school for kindergarten up to grade five, and the Maimonides upper school for grades six to 12.
It is a popular base for football teams, having hosted the US men’s and women’s national teams, plus club sides Borussia Dortmund and Real Betis in the past.
Adam Benmoise, director of auxiliary programmes at SDJA, said that when scouting potential bases for the summer, the Swiss delegation “loved everything that we had to offer”, in no small part due to the location – “less than two miles from the ocean, mixed with the seclusion and the brisk breeze – all the right selling points for Team Switzerland”.
He also revealed that the school is going to go to great lengths to make the Swiss team feel at home.
“We’re branding everything,” he said. “Swiss flags all over the field. That giant backstop will have a huge Swiss flag, and we’re going to have boards with all their branding.
"The press centre is going to be all red and white, so it’s going to feel like their home, and we’re doing that by design.”
And he said that “every dollar” raised from rentals like these goes back to teachers and students at the school.
In other news at the Swiss camp, players were warned last weekend about a snake habitat right next to the school.
An annotated image posted by the national team’s Instagram account shows a large “snake area” directly surrounding the training pitch.
Map of the snake area around Switzerland's training pitch (photo: Instagram @swissnatimen)[Missing Credit]
The local natural history museum in San Diego lists four venomous rattlesnake species in the region.
