This year’s SAISA football was something that I was not prepared for. Coming back from SAISA basketball I fractured my ankle at the tournament. This was a difficult time for me. Often, I am able to do and play sports freely without having to worry about injuries and other problems. However, with that injury, it became difficult for me to enjoy playing sports, as it is a daily enjoyment for me. This meant that I had to miss large portions of the football tryouts. It became difficult for me to make a name for myself during the tryouts, as I had to watch. Although I was injured I still came to every training session in order to show my commitment to the team and help out in order to increase my chances of making the team. 3 weeks passed until I was cleared to play again and had one week to prove myself to the coaches, I played as hard as I could, hustled, and attempted to be a leader. I was very fortunate to make the team, but I had squeezed in. But the battle was not over. I still had to fight for a spot to start on the team. I worked through my injury and built my fitness levels higher; even if I was not as skilled as the other players I could beat them with my fitness levels, and I know that the coaches look for fit players. By the end of the season and approaching the tournament I had a starting spot on the team. I was extremely pleased with myself for working past the difficulties that I faced at the start of the season because football means a lot to me.

Going into the SAISA tournament, our team was extremely optimistic and unserious about the situation. However, this all changed after our first match. We were playing ASB, the school from Mumbai. At first glance, their players did not look like much, as they were small and skinny, however, this first look completely flipped against us. We ended up losing 4-2. Our team played poorly, underestimated our opponents and this really set the tone for the rest of the tournament for us. Unfortunately, I believe our team was far more skilled than where we placed at the end of the tournament. We ended up coming 6th place out of 10 teams which was disappointing. When reflecting back on the competition I think our team should have kept a goal in mind before coming into the tournament.  Our mentality was poor and optimistic, and ultimately I think that it brought us down. Our inter-team relationships were also not great, and I think it would’ve better impacted our performance if we had trust developed within the players on our squad.