Fitness through Footy 2012 Kicks Off

The Minnesota Freeze kicked off the 2012 Fitness through Footy program today.  Fitness through Footy is a grass roots community based initiative that provides free fitness workouts for women of all ages, shapes, and fitness levels. Incorporating the skills of Australian Football provides a unique, challenging component to the work outs that can tailored to any fitness levels.  Its fun and challenging for beginners to elite athletes.

31 women and 3 coaches met at the Wayzata Central Middle School dome for 90 minutes of sweating, learning, and good times.  Minnesota Freeze Head Coach, Dale Williams kicked off the session with a little shop talk.  He turned over the reigns to Fitness Coach Cathy Hoha, who warmed the troops up for the mayhem that Coach Willams had in store.

Since Fitness through Footy incorporates skills of Australian Football into the workouts, the 20 new players were split into three groups to learn basic skills while the returning players ran a drill.  After learning the basics of hand passing, the group came together for a unified drill that incorporated lots of running and hand passing.  The rookies showed they were serious and displayed accurate hand passes which allowed the drill to proceed at a fast pace.

The groups were split up again to teach the players the basics of kicking and then everyone ran a drill together that incorporated everything learned so far.  Not forgetting the Fitness in Fitness through Footy, more drills were done with lots of running and that extra dynamic of using the oval shaped Australian Football.

The 90 minutes was wrapped up with a goal kicking contest to give the new players a taste of what the ultimate goal is all about. 

When asked about the program, Coach Williams said "We were all extremely pleased how successful our football program worked last year. We exceeded our 2011 goals by not only establishing a local women's competition, but also being able to take a full women's team to Nationals. I'm really excited to kick off the 2012 season with such a large growth in new player numbers, and also really proud that 100% of last year's players have returned; eager to participate again and improve on their first year of footy".

Freeze Captain Marie LaVictoire commented on the growth of the team "It's hard to imagine that we finished 2010 with a then record 5 women who competed at Nationals and now we've broken 100 members in our Meetup and had over 30 women out to our first Fitness through Footy session of 2012.  We are all excited to see the club and the sport grow and are anxious to see what this season has to offer."

Fitness through Footy is meeting 10 times between Jan 7 and April 14.  Besides returning to the Wayzata Dome and the YWCA Midtown's indoor facility, the group will be training at variety of venues such as Sgt Peterson's Boot Camp, Crossfit Tangletown, Beyond Personal Training, and Uppercut Boxing Gym.

To learn more about Fitness through Footy and to RSVP for upcoming events, visit http://meetup.com/MinnesotaFreezeWomen.