After countless training sessions, it was finally time to get on the plane and leave for Muscat, Oman, for my second and final SAISA Boys Volleyball tournament. I’ve been looking forward to this event for a long time, as the last tournament was a great opportunity to play volleyball against other teams, and to bond and have fun with the other players, while also seeing a new place and culture. I have never been to the Middle East before (apart from the airports), but I was always very interested in the culture. In that sense, the tournament was very enriching, but playing volleyball itself was of course the focus. After 11 great games, we managed to get fourth out of ten, which was great compared to last year, although with a bit more consistency we could have gotten into the finals. Our team was very inexperienced, as only three out of 10 players have been to a SAISA tournament before, and some had never even played volleyball before the training started. As volleyball is a sport where factors such as technique and skill come together with mental strength, having experience is vital for a team to play well.

The first match we played went well and we won both sets. The second game was very exciting, and our opposing team, AISC (Chennai) was very skilled, which made us win the game by only two points in the second set. We saw some excellent volleyball during our last two games, but we lost to Bombay and Dhaka after several very long rallies and excellent spikes, receives, blocks and sets. I was disappointed at the end of the first day that my serves did not go very well. During practices, I used to get 15 serves in a row, but during on that day somehow I did miss a lot. I think it might have been due to me having had Dengue fever before the tournament and I didn’t play for three weeks. Fortunately this changed on the second day, on which we played very well, and our spirits were high for all the matches. The day ended with three wins and one loss. We won against ISOI (Islamabad) LS (Kathmandu, and last year’s second place), and KAS (Karachi), while we lost to the home team TAISM. The final day started with a win against LAS (Lahore) that landed us in the top four, meaning we had qualified for the semi finals. Many games both that day and the day before were played into the third set, which is always very exciting, but also tiring and in the end, staying strong mentally is very important. This was already a great milestone as we came 8th last year,  but we were eager to get into the top 3, something that we knew was possible at our skill level. Unfortunately, we lost the semi finals against Dhaka, although we came very close to them in both sets of the game. This was very demotivating, and so we unfortunately also lost the 3rd place game against home team TAISM, which was an even closer game, but in the end we could make the change and win the sets.

So we ended in 4th position, a great improvement from last year, although slightly disappointing as we could have been better. However, the enjoyment everyone had off the court I believe made this position less relevant, and while it was still important for us to play well, what makes these tournaments so special is the social aspect, which was excellent this year, particularly getting to know people from the other schools, who I didn’t talk to a lot the previous year. What was sad however was that I knew I would not see them again as this was my last SAISA tournament. In the final award ceremony, our team was awarded four sportsmanship awards, which are given by the other teams to teams or players who exhibited great sportsmanship. This shows how good of a team we were not only in volleyball, but also socially and in terms of fairness and politeness on the court.

 

As captain of the team, I recognized my responsibility to stay confident and encouraging throughout the tournament. This worked well and we were fired up during many of the games in a way I’ve never seen. Even the other teams told us they noticed how motivated we were, something they said made a big impact on our performance. This is true, as volleyball has all to do with mentality, and being confident has a huge impact on the way a team plays. A great advantage was that all of us liked each other and we didn’t get mad when someone made a mistake. We had problems with this last year, which greatly decreased our quality of playing. Of course, even more importantly is that this allowed us to have a lot of fun both on and off the court. We stayed in a hotel the first night of the trip as our flight had been moved, which allowed us to bond and enjoy our time together, something I think benefited the our playing.

My host family was great, and I really enjoyed spending time with them, together with Rizqi, my team’s libero. The family was Turkish and it was very interesting to get to know their way of living. In the evenings we went out twice, once to Nando’s, a very good restaurant chain I remember fondly from South Africa, and once to a beachfront on the other side of Muscat, which was also very interesting. Duru, the daughter in the family and 17 years old, was a lot of fun and we had relaxing, enjoyable and interesting conversations with her and her friends who stayed over. I was really sad when we left, as Rizqi and I had a great relationship with the whole family.

In summary, this was a great tournament, and some of the things that I experienced I will remember forever. The playing was excellent but truly tiring at 11 games in three days, and was a lot of fun, with some excellent rallies, hits and recoveries, most of the time with excellent team spirit. Aside from that, what was especially memorable was the social aspect, like joking around with my teammates at the mall, between games and on the flight, interacting with players from the other teams and getting to know new people, and enjoying time with our hosts and getting a glimpse of their life in another part of the world. I was very sad after the final game and when we left the following morning, as this was my last SAISA. I felt both happy that it was such a great event, but sad that it had to come to an end and that I would never have such a tournament again, never spend time with fun people from other schools again and never laugh and talk with my friends and teammates again in the way we did at the tournament.