One of the CAS Goals I set at the start of this year was to participate in a SAISA tournament as an athlete. I felt that this was an important experience that I had missed out on during my time as a student in SAISA schools. Since sports in general is an area of weakness, participating in a SAIS team would allow me to strengthen this area in my portfolio. Furthermore, I knew that participating in the training for a SAISA team would be beneficial for my mental and physical health and wellbeing. Therefore, I decided to try and achieve this goal by trying out for the SAISA Badminton team during the second season of Gecko Athletics.

Although I haven’t played much Badminton before, I chose the sport because I have played tennis for a long time and I felt that I could transfer my skills in one racket sport to another. Almost half of the Badminton season has come to a close, and I have progressed a lot during this time. I learnt a lot about the rules of the game and developed a better tactical knowledge of the game. Furthermore, I have also greatly improved in terms of the consistency and accuracy of my different shots such as the clear, smash, drop and the serve.

As a result of my improvements, I managed to get selected to the SAISA Badminton team for the tournament to be held in Chennai in late February. My application of this new tactical knowledge along with the consistent and accurate shots meant that I managed to be quite successful in the selection tournament between all the athletes who tried out. Now that I have made the team, my goal is to further develop a better understanding of the strategies and tactics of the game to be successful in a competitive setting.