Picture this: you’re a new student at NES… It’s your very first PE lesson in the September heat and the PE teacher takes you to these odd-looking basketball courts that are different from anything you have ever seen, and you soon come to find out they were for a sport called ‘Netball’.
Ever since Year 8, I knew that I would become devoted to Netball. Come along Year 9, I decided to try out for every team, no matter the outcome. I secured a place on the Netball and Volleyball teams. Believe it or not, I met some of my best friends on those courts, and I’ve learnt so many things about being a team player and improving as an individual.
This was my last sport season at NES and the open age Netball team was given the opportunity to go to the BSME games. These were my first and last games. And although we didn’t do well in the football tournament, all of us had fun on the field and learned things about football that we didn’t really know before BSME. For example, Ms Farmer taught us how to ‘park a bus’ with our defence.
The next day, we had the Netball tournament. While the first game was a harsh defeat for us, with a lot of team work and exceptional coaching from Ms Miller, we worked our way to the semi finals, where we played the toughest game of our lives. We were ready to win this; we knew we could do it and stepped on the court ready to give it our all. Throughout the whole game, the score was even, but in the last second, the opposing team scored the winning shot, leaving us in competition for the third place. I have never experienced such a mix of anger, frustration and sadness all at once. It is extremely hard to pick yourself up from a loss like this, but with collective support and motivation, we got our heads back into the game.
With the last blow of the whistle, we realised this was our last game together. There were tears streaming down all of our faces and there was nothing else we could do but hug each other as we said goodbye to netball. We secured third place in the netball tournament and our captain was awarded the MVP of the netball tournament.
We made it back to Kuwait tired and emotionally exhausted but also grateful to have had such an opportunity to play together one last time.
Even though we did not manage to finish our volleyball season, which hurts me tremendously as volleyball is very important to me, I have to mention the progress that the team has made throughout the years. A great example of this is that in Year 11, only two people on our team were able to overarm serve, yet upon our return to Year 12, our whole team was serving with an overarm. For this, we thank Mr Francisco for always believing in us and pushing us beyond our limits. While playing Volleyball, we learned that there is no ‘MY ball’; it is OUR ball and there is only one court: OUR court. Additionally, we learned to control our emotions and use them to our advantage.
I will forever be thankful for the opportunities I was given in NES, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all our coaches for believing in us, for being patient, for spending endless afternoons coaching us in the hot sun and giving away their weekends to take us to BSME games. Furthermore, I wish to thank my teammates, who have helped me believe in myself and helped me grow on and off the court. We won together and lost together, we cried from happiness and sadness as a team– and I will miss each and every one of you. I truly couldn’t have asked for better teammates.
