Visit from American soccer players

Jim Leishman played host to a group from Gulfcoast United in Tampa, Florida

On Monday 19 March, Jim Leishman played host to a group of young American players with their parents and a couple of the coaching staff along with Director of Coaching Jim McDonald from Gulfcoast United in Tampa, Florida. The group are over in Scotland for just over a week and as well as taking in the Motherwell v Aberdeen match, and going to the Scottish Communities League Cup final on Sunday, they are also visiting Queens Park, Motherwell and Hibernian as well as Dunfermline Athletic.

The group were given a tour of East End Park including the Boardroom and Changing Rooms by Jim Leishman but they also had to listen to Jim giving them a history of Dunfermline Athletic and a few words of wisdom!

Director of Coaching Jim McDonald, who originally comes from Govan, had played soccer in Canada before taking up coaching positions firstly in Canada and then in America with clubs which included Indiana Blast and Centre Grove Soccer Club in Indiana and has been at Gulfcoast United since 2008.  During his time in America, Jim told the website that he had coached a couple of local lads who had gone out to the States, John Higgins (previously a youth player at Dunfermline) and Andy Rollo, who's brother Stephen was a coach with him in America.

Although some of the party are travelling back home on Saturday, it is expected that a couple of the boys and coaches will be at East End Park for the vital game against St Mirren.

We hope that the boys and parents enjoyed their visit to East End Park and to the training ground at Pitreavie where they met some of the players after training on Monday morning.  On Monday evening they joined in with U11/12 Development squads training at Pitreavie with Stephen Wright.