On Monday, February 13th, we had the first training session for the Badminton team. This year, the tournament was going to be held in Mumbai, India. I was excited to try out for badminton again, as my last experience was great. When I entered the gym, I noticed that a lot of people, including many girls, had signed up for badminton compared to last time. This meant that it would be harder to secure a spot on the team, as there were returning players from last year and other talented newcomers. My biggest challenge during training was my fitness level, as I hadn’t played badminton since the last SAISA tournament and my stamina was low. I realized that I would have to work hard to earn a spot on the team. During the first session, we did warm-up exercises and then moved on to practicing rallies in tosses, parallels, and drops. I struggled to move around the court and quickly became tired, resulting in me taking frequent breaks. The final activity was court running, an exercise to improve court coverage in badminton. Due to my lack of stamina, I tired quickly. After a 10-minute cooldown, I realized where I stood compared to other players in the group and understood that I needed to work extra hard to make it into the team. In subsequent sessions, I worked hard to improve my performance and saw progress as I made fewer mistakes in my shots. However, my fitness level remained a challenge, affecting my court coverage and leading to losses in matches. During the trials, I gave it my all, but my fitness let me down. However, this year, the team was going to have a reserve player, and I saw this as an opportunity. I had to beat one player to become the reserve player, and I succeeded. Although I didn’t make the traveling team, I was happy to be part of the reserve team. I learned a lot during this journey, particularly the importance of fitness.