SAISA Volleyball 2023- Kathmandu, Nepal
This November, the South Asian Interscholastic Association (SAISA), had its girls volleyball tournament in Kathmandu, Nepal! OSC traveled with a group of 10 players and 2 coaches, eager to play and bring home some good results. This was my second SAISA volleyball tournament, and I was super excited to play with this year’s team, and hopefully place higher than we did last time (7th place).
We started training as a team in August of this year, and had continued to grow and bond right untill the start of the tournament. Leading up to the event, we played local Sri Lankan teams almost every Friday in preparation, and the results were looking very good for the Geckos! (our school mascot).
Going into the tournament, we had very clear focuses and expectations as a team: to play our best, and hopefully, as a result of that, place in a high position. We already knew who our main competitors were, one of those teams were in our pool (Lincoln School), and one of them weren’t, so we knew we would need to play well in our pool games to have the chance to go against them.
The first day of the competition, we had 2 games: AISC and ASB. We won both our games and we were thrilled with those results, however, the team went to bed anxiously awaiting tomorrow morning’s game, against Lincoln School. We had beat this team last year, so we knew we could do it again, however, unfortunately, we weren’t on our A game, as we lost the match. Disappointed, we prepared for our next game, and luckily ended up winning against LAS.
This put us in a 3 way tie with AISC and LS. Because of this tie, the next morning’s game was a qualifier for the semi-finals, against ACS. We went into the game and really brought the energy and fierceness we were lacking the day before, and won the match in 2 sets, putting us through to the semi-finals. We managed to keep our energy all the way until the semis, knowing if we won this game we would be through to the finals, and onto a re-match with LS. We fought hard, once again, unfortunately ended up losing the second set by just a few points. The team was upset, but we congratulated each other and walked away with our heads held high, knowing we played extremely well.
Finally, it was time for our last game, playing for the 3rd place spot against AISD. This game was a 5 set game, so we had to really make sure we were ready to play for this long, and keep our team up no matter what happened. We played hard and won the first set, but ended up just losing the second set. Determined to fight back, we won the second, lost the third, and the match was into its 5th set, this time, only to 15 points. Halfway through the game, we were down 3 points: 8-11. It was time to give it our all, and we really did. We made the comeback, and pushed through, the score was now 13-13. The AISD Tigers called a time out, but it did not faze us, and we kept going right to the end, winning the match 13-15, and securing our third place position. Having come 7th last year, the team was ecstatic, and we were so proud that everything we had worked for finally paid off, and we were happy to return to Colombo with our plaque and shiny medals.