This year, the OSC SAISA Girls’ Football team traveled to the American School of Bombay, in Mumbai, India. SAISA is the South Asian International Schools Association which hosts different kinds of events, including sports, arts, academic, etc.
After a hard 8 weeks of training (which you can read about in my previous blog), we finally got the chance to leave our home pitch and travel to Bombay. Of course, as a tradition in our school, we had a prep rally to pump up our spirits and get some support from the school before our departure. Thankfully, our student government association (SGA) prepared an amazing prep rally for us, and as always, our school pushed us to our fullest, cheered us on, and filled our spirits with support and faith.
In SAISA, there are three other sporting events happening at the same time, this season there was: girls’ football, boys’ basketball, and track and field, and these events usually happen separately from each other. However, this time ASB was hosting both girls’ football and boys’ basketball, so I knew this was going to be a big tournament. We left for Mumbai in the afternoon of April 10th, with the boys’ basketball team. And arrived later in the evening.
Day one began rough, we arrived at ASB early in the morning and were all very tired from the flight before. The opening ceremony is a standard assembly that happens at the beginning of every SAISA tournament, where the following things take place:
- We read the SAISA oath
- The team captains light the ceremonial oil lamp (as apart of South Asian culture)
- We are welcomed as foreign teams and athletes to the school
We played the second game of the tournament, against the American International School of Dhaka (AISD). We began the game with spirit and strength and ended the game exactly the same. We fought a tough game, but the results did not resemble our fight. After one goal in for AISD, we pushed ourselves and played our hearts till we finally tied once more. We finished 2-1 to AISD, but our heads never fell down. We stayed focused and pumped, for we knew our next game would be ours. And it was, our second game was at the end of the first day and it was against the American Community School of Amman (ACS). The game was a harsh 90 minutes, and there were a bunch of close goals from both teams. However, we gave it our all and end our game with a tie of 0-0. We were pleased, but not satisfied and knew that our next game had to be our victory, for it was our key to semi-finals.
Day two was calm but intense, we had one game to give all our energy and concertation to, which was against the American International School of Chennai. Our hearts were full of the thirst for victory, and at midday, we were on the pitch ready to play. As always, we gave this game our all and the results definitely reflected our efforts, we ended the game 4-1. This pulled us through to semi-finals and we could not be happier, I think this was one of my best moments with the team.
Finally, we reached day three, with two games to win to be the champions of this tournament. Our first game was against The American International School of Muscat (TAISM), which would have taken us to finals. The game began intensely and remained the same throughout, we had some hard hits to a lot of our players, but we did not stop pushing. This game was a great highlight of my SAISA experience because it showed my team’s unstoppable spirit and effort. Our love for football brought us strength, and the support from my team members gave me faith. We were tied 0-0 at the end of the 90 minutes, and we went into overtime for another 20. After a 110-minute game, we were defeated 1-0 and that closed our gateway to the championship. Our hearts were broken but we knew we had to be strong for our next and final game of the season. This game placed us for third and fourth place, against Lincoln School (LS). We played exactly the same as all of our other games: with every piece of strength and effort we had. Our game ended once again with a tie 1-1, but this time there was no overtime. We went immediately into penalties, putting the faith of the tournament in our goalie’s (Emily) hands. The results broke us when Lincoln scored two up against us, but we stood strong as a team and pushed on knowing our battle was unforgettable. This season was unforgettable, and I could not have asked for a better team to be a part of this season. The memories we made, moments we shared, and battles we fought through made me the best player I could be, and I could not be more grateful to play alongside such an inspiring group of girls. Ending this season with only one thing to say:
“We are pumped cause we’re pitch perfect!”