Enlarge image (© Germany.info) When your German soccer coach says “Pass den Ball” on the first day of soccer camp, it’s understood what is to be done—no German skills needed. Out on the field, where split-second timing is essential, you learn to communicate quickly, as a means to winning the game.

The five German soccer coaches who led the four two-week clinics of the German Language Summer Soccer Camps, part of the “do Deutsch – German Weeks” campaign, unanimously praised the program's ability to transfer the passion for sport to a passion for language learning. With adrenaline flowing, participants were already understanding and speaking basic German words and phrases by the end of the first training session. In session after session, the idea grew and was reinforced: “German is not wizardry; I can actually 'have a ball' learning it and the German coaches are really cool!”

Enlarge image (© Germany.info)

The German Embassy in Washington organized the program together with the Concordia Language Villages in northern Minnesota, represented by its dean Dan Hamilton (or "Karl," as he is known at camp). With the assistance of Matthias Eiles, founder of the not-for-profit organization Auf Ballhöhe (“at ball-level”), five young professional German soccer coaches were selected. After the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG) publicized the project to US schools with German programs, the initiators selected  two high schools (in Anaheim, California and Morgantown, Pennsylvania), which have summer soccer programs, to host the German soccer coaches for their two-week camps. In addition, the German Waldsee camp of Concordia Language Villages hosted two German language soccer clinics.

In total, more than 320 American young men and women took part in the soccer camps. For many, it was their first exposure to the German language or to a “real German.” All camps focused on soccer skills over language learning, thus underscoring the basic idea of the project: to bring young people into contact with German in an “unsuspected and unmediated” manner (unvermutet und unvermittelt).

Enlarge image (© Germany.info) All participants, including the students, teachers, and project partners, were altogether enthusiastic about the German summer soccer camps. Those campers who had not previously taken German classes were able to gain a positive impression of the German language and their coaches. Some of them turned to the German teachers at their schools to ask about taking German. The campers who already had some exposure to the language could practice communicating with a native speaker—and show off their skills, linguistic and athletic.

The German Summer Soccer Camps, in motivating young people to learn German beyond the traditional classroom and textbook-based methods, proved to be a worthy element of the “do Deutsch” campaign. Given the growing interest in the “beautiful game” in the US, and potential for cross-cultural connections through the soccer world, planning is underway to continue or even expand the program in the summer of 2012.