“One…two…three…BSM TOUCH!”
On Saturday, 18th January, BSM’s first ever Girls Touch Rugby team bade farewell to an amazing 4-month season. One Monday afternoon in early September, over 20 senior girls showed up on the field to attend what, for most of us, would be our very first touch rugby training.
“Who here knows how to play touch rugby?” asked Josh Whyte, one of our coaches. Very few hands went up.
“Okay then. Who here has at least seen a touch rugby game?” he tried again. Still, only two or three hands went up.
“I see,” he conceded, trying to feign enthusiasm. “Looks like we’ll have to start from the very beginning!”
And that’s exactly what we did. From then on, every Monday afternoon we turned up, cleat-laden and ready to learn what most of us agreed to be an intense, yet exciting sport. We started with basic running and passing drills, and gradually moved on to practising different tactical formations. I must admit it was extremely frustrating at times, trying to keep up with all the rules and strategies bombarded at us. But after a few weeks of training, Josh, as well as our other coaches--Mr Barrett, Kai Stroem, Andrew Melrose, Jamie Young and Sophia Perret--affirmed that overall, we were making good progress.
Soon after, we began going to ISM weekly to play against their girls’ touch rugby teams. Some of us were disheartened upon seeing how good ISM was compared to us, but this feeling of disappointment soon disappeared as we were told that the ISM girls trained at least 4 times a week, in comparison to our sole Monday sessions.
The next two tournaments were held at ISM in December, and Brent Manila in early January. We faced some tough competition, such as the Philippine National Women’s team. But no matter what the outcome was, we were proud to have played our best.
The final tournament of the season took place on Saturday, 17th January 2015, on our very own Parcel 2 field. It was by far the most successful tournament of the entire season, with BSM winning all three of our games. As the whistle signalling the end of our final game against Faith Academy blew, the whole team screamed with delight, not only because of the win, but also because we were so proud of how far we’d come as a team.
“Remember the first day of training, when some of us didn’t even know how to pass the ball?” someone whispered as we huddled in for a team photo. We all laughed right as the camera clicked, forever capturing that moment of pure happiness.
