Wow, just wow. I don’t think there is an adequate expression to describe the way I feel both about my team as a whole and about the way we performed this past week for the annual SAISA girl’s soccer tournament that was held in Muscat, Oman.
We started training around November of 2019, with 3 weekly practices and most weeks a game against a local school as well. During the practices we would focus on skills and techniques as well as drills, scrimmaging and practice games. At the start of the season, many of us were inexperienced in soccer or had played for no longer than one year.
However, that quickly changed as we all began to truly develop our skills as a soccer player and we learned how to play as a team by practicing our passing, communication, and teamwork skills. Despite having started the season in November, we had Christmas break during most of the month of December, and we had many days off between November and February, therefore making this season somewhat short.
That didn’t seem to stop us, though. Throughout the holidays we created a workout schedule to follow in our time to keep our fitness levels up and to stay in shape for the season. Despite our main focus not being set on conditioning, we seemed to all be pretty fit, which can be reflected in our results from the season, which is what I will be discussing next.
We left on Wednesday, 19th of February early in the morning, arriving around noon in Muscat. We then took a bus to Muscat Avenues Mall, where we met 4 other SAISA school teams (Chennai, Bombay, Dhaka, and Nepal). We used this time to eat some lunch (mostly junk food…) and also shop around a little bit, even though everything was so expensive and we ended up spending our money in the supermarket!
After around 3 hours at the mall, we got back on the bus and headed to TAISM (the American International School of Muscat), where the tournament was going to be held in the following days, in order to get picked up by our hosts.
After a long travel day, we headed to our host homes, ate dinner and slept. The next morning we woke up, full of energy and ready for a day of tough games. Our first game was against the home team, TAISM, which had also been the reigning champions for the past 3 years… Despite giving it our all, they scored one lucky goal in the bottom left corner of our goal.
However, we didn’t let that 1-0 loss stop us. We got back up, ate some lunch, rested and had a team discussion on how we were going to improve, and we entered the field to play Karachi, our next opponent. We came out strong with a 5-0 win and ended our last game of the day on a positive note.
From that day onwards, our scores consistently stayed mostly at wins, with the exception of TAISM;
OSC vs. TAISM- 0-1
OSC vs. Karachi- 5-0
OSC vs. Dhaka- 1-0
OSC vs. Bombay- 3-0
OSC vs. Jordan- 2-1
OSC vs. TAISM (FINALS)- 2-3
As seen above, the only team we lost to was TAISM, but let’s not forget to mention the fact that that occurred in the FINALS, which we got to with a lot of hard work, effort, and teamwork. Throughout the entire tournament, we scored a total of 13 goals and only conceded 5. Despite our lead of 2-0 in the first half of the finals against TAISM, they came in strong and scored a total of 3 goals in under 15 minutes. Even though we lost in the finals, I still have a lot to look back on and be proud of.
This is only my second year playing soccer, and many people on our team as well, with some being their first year playing. We formed an extremely strong team that seemed to improve more and more as the games went on. I’m proud of our determination, of our collaboration and of our plays.
I’m extremely grateful for this experience that I was able to have, not only for playing on the field and competing against other schools, but also for the experiences I had while being off the field; for the loud conversations during the games, for the never-ending inside jokes with the TAISM teams, for the sportsmanship that was demonstrated both on and off the field, and for the respect that was represented by each team in every aspect of the tournament.
I wish I could have soccer season every season instead of just once a year, but since that isn’t possible, I’m going to keep training for next year in hopes of placing 1st!