Saisa Football – 16/4/2024

 Football has always been my favorite sport, it’s the one I grew up playing. As a young Messi fan watching the good old games, especially the El Clasico between Barcelona and Real Madrid was something I lived for. If you were to take the prime Barcelona squad and make them play blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs you would pretty much have the OSC Boys football team.

Hahah’m just joking of course… The OSC  football team is one of the sports teams that I am most proud to represent. Football is usually held during season three, I like to say they save the best for last. There’s something about playing football with my friends that I just love. I look forward to having Football after school and I would even go to the extent to say it’s the highlight of my week. I would say that I’m a pretty good football player, I play along with wings and it helps that I’m fast. Track is usually right before football and this helps me because I’m in quite good shape after track season due to the excessive amount of cardio we do. The transition between track and football flows well. 

This was my second year playing football for OSC, last year, well let’s just say it wasn’t great. Our team came a disappointing 6th out of 8, but having said this I will tell you now that it was my favorite SAISA experience by far. For me, traveling with 10 of my close friends and having fun in a foreign country was such a core memory that I won’t forget. 

A few of our old seniors in the squad had graduated, so the new team has a lot of young talent. Pre-season was exciting because there was a whole new dynamic to the team, we seemed like a stronger team than last year so I hoped to place higher. I’m pretty sure at one point every plate on the team was convinced that we could win SAISA, haha good times!

Fast forwarding to the tournament, I think it’s safe to say that we were pleasantly surprised by the competition. All the schools had significantly improved from last year, with a few of them even changing their entire team. We lost the opening game to Lincoln which was the host school, the noise from the home crowd hit us hard and shattered our spirits. I remember our Coaches Mr.Turner and Mr.Scott giving us a few motivational speeches which helped to pick the team up. 

The next day, we played especially hard because our chances of making the quarter-finals were slowly slipping away. In the end, we managed to beat a finalist team coming from Pakistan. However due to our bad luck in considering a last-minute overtime goal, our team placed 9th out of the 10 schools, and our SAISA was sadly over.  On a better note, true to OSC Boys SAISA Football’s nature, this experience didn’t disappoint. As a team we traveled around the streets of Kathmandu Nepal exploring the small street shops and trying the cuisine, some food items were slightly sketchy and questionable but a cool experience. During our time in the host school Lincoln, we made new friends with boys from the other schools, spent time in the pool and even had time to meet a few primary kids who supported us throughout the tournament. 

This could well be my Final SAISA football in OSC. I will be a senior next year and I’m not sure if my exam schedule will allow me to participate in football again. This experience is something that I will cherish. I had so much fun hanging out with my friends. I feel like the hard times of getting knocked out brought us closer together because as a team we worked through our weaknesses and helped one another to come back stronger. In a way, the boy’s football squad felt more like family to me than just another team.