This year, I decided to continue doing SAISA volleyball. SAISA stands for “The South Asian Interscholastic Association” and it brings 11 top international schools from across the Indian subcontinent region together to compete against one another in sports, music and other extracurricular activities. There are several seasons of sports throughout the year, in this case for season 1, I pursued volleyball because it was and still is a sport that I love and enjoy playing.
The Lincoln school hosted the volleyball tournament this year so me and my teammates had the pleasure to travel and explore Kathmandu, Nepal. Before traveling, we had several months of training beforehand in order to not only ameliorate our skills but to also get to know each other more as well as to learn all our strengths and weaknesses as a team. I found that a lot of my techniques this year have majorly improved such as my setting, hitting, bumping, awareness and blocking. During our practices, our coaches (Mrs. Kelly and Mr. Turner) taught us a variety of exercises/games for us to target specific areas of volleyball. Some days would cover receiving the ball, other days we would practice hitting and blocking and following that we would work on spatial awareness. Our training would be set up in ways where it would make the setting feel like an actual game/competition. This helped us put our heads in the game and forced us to make important in game decisions that would benefit the whole team. My highlights during the SAISA trip included:
- Winning our final set against AISD (American International School of Dhaka) making OSC third place overall in girl’s volleyball this year. This match against the Tigers was incredibly intense as both our teams were determined to win each point. Our game went up to five sets (five sets were the max and the first team to win fifteen points during that last set would win the game) and by the time we reached the last set, everyone was under a lot of stress because it was quite challenging to remain calm and put our heads in the game due to the pressure/fear of making an error or mistake. I remember my legs and arms being sore but as the adrenaline circulated in my body, I ignored the soreness and kept on pushing till the end. I wanted to put forward my absolute best.
- Another memorable moment during this trip was hanging out with my teammates as well as getting to know other SAISA team members. We all shared laughs and enjoyed each other’s company. We supported one another during our downs and cheered during our ups. We always encouraged each and everyone of us to do our absolute best and to most importantly, have fun!
Finally, one aspect that I will always remember from SAISA girl’s volleyball was that even though SAISA students may live so far away from one another, the sports competitions always bring this tight knit community together and allow us to always stay connected with each other no matter the distance ❤️
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