An Inspiration? As well as Starting the SAISA Season✨

An Inspiration: 

As the SAISA season is starting, I will no longer be able to continue doing the Kickerz sessions on Saturdays. This post is coming in quite late, I know, but that last session really meant a lot more to me than I thought it would’ve. As we were playing a game to end the session, one of the girls came up to me, who by the way is very good, especially for her age; said, “you are phenomenal at football, and such an inspiration. I want to play just like you when I’m older”. Firstly, she used the word “phenomenal”, which is impressive because when I was her age I guarantee you I did not know this kind of vocabulary. Secondly, I’m really not that great at football, but the fact that she said that made me feel so good about my football abilities (ego boost). Thirdly, and most importantly, this meant so much to me because growing up I didn’t really have any female footballers to look up to. Thus, the fact that I can be an inspiration to these girls (another girl said, “yeah you are so good!”), means so much to me and makes me extremely happy. I hope they continue to play, and I will continue to try and make an appearance when I can. This was such a heartwarming and emotional moment for me, and yet another drive factor to work even harder to achieve my SAISA goals for this year.  

Starting the SAISA Season: 

So, our first session was okay. It was not great, but it was not bad either. Something important to take into account however, is that this year’s first session was a million times better than last year’s – so that is good. Nevertheless, we all still have a long way to go. Last year we got 4th place overall, which you know is okay. But it’s 4th, it’s so close to the podium, yet so far away. As that was also my first time doing a team sports SAISA (I did track and field x3 before), it was quite the learning experience for me. I even wrote my language & literature summative memoir on it last year. Moreover, my team goal for this year is to make the podium (and get a nice shiny medal), especially because SAISA girls football is hosted here in Colombo, I would not want to disappoint the home crowd. My personal goals include to become a faster and stronger player (in regards to ball control and skills) as well as improve upon my fitness, and finally just become more consistent with my shots on goal (right now, they are a bit too off target). 

1st Game: 

We had our first game on November 24th. We played 7-aside against CIS (Colombo International School). As we have a total of 14 girls trying out for the team, we divided the team in 2 and played two 7-aside games.  We were divided into an older and younger team. The younger team did extremely well, leading 5:2 in the first half. The older team on the other hand (my team), struggled in the first half and tied 0:0. We were just not taking our proper first touches, it was messy and just could not get the ball into the back of the net. We were also struggling a lot with our fitness, which is something none of us have really worked on up to now. In the second half we definitely caught ourselves a lot and played so much better. We ended up winning 1:0. I scored the goal, and it was actually one of the best goals I’ve ever scored – outside of the box top right corner. But of course I also need to give credit to the amazing assist by my teammate, Anais. Overall, this first game was alright. We all learned from it, and agreed to start working on our currently non-existent fitness (perhaps we will start doing morning sessions for this).