Boidu supporting drive to encourage kids to get active

Westmeath footballer Boidu Sayeh believes strongly that for children, participation in exercise is crucial, and that it not only helps their mental health, but can also help with their academic performance.

The young Rosemount man is not just pulling popular notions out of the air and regurgitating them: he is a qualified personal trainer and knows the important role both diet and exercise play.

That is why, he explains, he was happy to become associated with the Laya Healthcare ‘Laya Super Troopers’ programme, which is promoting holistic health among children in Irish primary schools.

“The whole thing about the Super Trooper project is it is trying to encourage a healthy and sporty lifestyle for kids – and some adults as well – but mainly for kids and trying to get them involved in healthy eating and make them aware what it takes to get from the level of being a healthy active kid to maybe achieving the goal you really want to achieve – like playing for your county or playing for your soccer team or what it takes,” Boidu said this week.

Boidu has plenty of personal experience to draw on; just eight years old when he started playing GAA, he is now a household name – and, he believes – poised to see Westmeath do great things, starting with the target of securing promotion next year back up to Division 2.

“We were unlucky last year to get relegated to Division 3. So this year it is going to be our target to try and get back up to Division 2. A lot of people see us as a Division 2 team and not Division 3, so that expectation is there to try and get back up.

“There’s a good sense of determination within the team. And we know how good we are as well – so we just have yet to prove that on the pitch.”

The training schedule is hectic – and as he is currently living and working in Galway, it means long drives on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and again at weekends.

Working in a gym in Galway, Boidu is enjoying living close to the sea. Like so many others, he’s been bitten in recent times by the sea-swimming bug:

“I haven’t actually gone in this month, but in the last few months I definitely got into the sea nearly every day and just get a dip clears the head and it’s a good way to just relax and just get your mind off things as well.”

For Boidu, life began in Liberia – but it was during a troubled time in that country’s history, as civil war raged.

“Soccer was probably my number one sport growing up [in Liberia]. We all supported all the soccer teams, but we didn’t have a clue where they were at the time.

“I don’t have much memory of going to school because as I was growing up there was a bit of a civil war going on, and I was being moved around a lot, so I didn’t really have that sporting background.

“I was sporty in general, but I didn’t have that experience of knowing a team environment: I was mainly just kicking around a ball with friends and playing soccer outside in sandals and no shoes, and all that kind of stuff.”

In 2004, at the age of eight, Boidu arrived in Rosemount to live with his uncle, Ben, and Ben’s wife Therese Kinahan, a native of Rosemount.

They enrolled Boidu in Rosemount NS, and thus began his introduction to GAA, and Boidu freely admits that his transition to this new environment was eased somewhat through the fact of his natural sportiness.

“It was obviously a big cultural shock and a big difference,” Boidu recalls.

“I arrived in Ireland on my eighth birthday. So I wasn’t ‘very’ young, but I wasn’t that old either. So I was just able to jump in to society at a young age: it was kind of easier.

“So I jumped in to first class when I landed in Ireland.

“As an eight-year-old, you’re into sports and being part of a sports team is probably the most important thing in order to get friends and to immerse yourself into a community. So I started playing GAA – and soccer and athletics – and that really opened a lot of doors for me. That helped me to get to the level I’m playing at.

“So it all began in national school, playing GAA – I’m learning how to play that and starting from scratch with everything.”

He considers that he was fortunate to be in a school that so strongly promoted GAA. “Jim Dalton from Milltown used to come in and he was probably one of the biggest influences in me getting into sports because he used to come in every Friday and train us in GAA, and he was one of the key people who influenced me to take sport seriously, especially GAA.”

Apart from the sport, Boidu loves the community side that comes from involvement: “GAA is the biggest thing in Rosemount: you have the church and the GAA pitch and they’re the two things that everyone gathers around and that’s what kind of made me love it so much. There was this massive community and everyone just put in all their effort into it to create a good kind of environment and a good culture for the kids growing up.”