winning in many ways...!

the team, and supporters before the big games

the 9th of august is a special day in south africa when we think about the wonderful women of the country, it's a public holiday and many things are done to celebrate women, however for myself, josh, seb and our sports mentors there was no lay in as we were up by 6am collecting the mentors from their homes in the formal and informal settlements before we made the hour long journey to worcester where we were taking part in a soccer tournament organised by solid rock.

kick off!

we arrived ready for registration at 8am after a fantastic drive through the snowing mountains and by 9.30 the event was well underway with teams from the whole of the boland area competing in various age groups from under 9's right the way through to under 19's. we had entered a team made up of our under 17 mentors with a few supporters joining us for the ride!....unfortunately we were placed into the under 19 competition but this didn't deter our team of five players with two subs, who were wearing some new football boots donated by tony allen, who relished the challenge of competing against the older boys (men)!

the ground with snowy mountains in the background

during our first two games we looked very nervous and although we led both games we ended up drawing those 2-2 which was a little disappointing, however it was a round robin tournament which meant we were going to play another six games against the other teams.

over the next six games we went from strength to strength, coming back from 2-3 down to win 4-3 and then thumping the next three teams 5-1, 6-1, 7-2, we finished off the tournament against the two strongest (other than us) teams and won those 3-0 and 2-0 respectively. it was a truly wonderful display with the team playing so well together with sterling performances from the goal keeper through our back line up to our amazing goal scorers.

our star player of the tournament 

there was a very strange scoring system which in principle worked well, where teams we given beans instead of points, ten beans for a win,  five for a draw and one for turning up (losing!), however there were other ways to 'win/collect' beans, such as collecting litter, sitting in straight lines for lunch etc, as i say the principle of the system was great, however the application left a little to be desired and we some how missed out on winning the whole competition via this system.

that said our boys were complimented on their sporting behavior and although i am biased we were the team of the tournament in all aspects of the day and i can only praise the way the boys took the news that they hadn't won the prized kit which we were playing for.

there was a silver lining to the day as we did come away with one highlight which was the fact that our youngest player was voted senior player of the tournament, not bad for a 16 year old pitting his skills against 20 year olds, however his skill levels were outstanding and it wasn't a surprise that he won the overall prize!

a great day was had by all, the day was well organised and although we arrived back in grabouw over 12 hours later, most of the boys slept all the way home, it was great spending time with them and seeing the skills, both football skills and the lifeskills that we encourage each and every day during our outreaches coming to the fore.....a big thank you josh for joining me in the driving, you were really a star!