On the 28th of August, I woke up, prepared, and got ready to arrive at school. I was filled with excitement, but also scared since I hadn’t played with schools for a while. When I arrived at school, I went inside my class, Room 7, asking to get my tags but I was just in trouble so in a fright, I went to cloak bay, wore my sport shoes, and brought my sports and school bag to the canopy.
I dropped my bag on the wooden stairs, where some of my friends would sit there, talk about things and maybe play with the other students playing under the canopy. While playing, I used my excitement to warm myself up by playing football with my friends for about 15 minutes, until Annamaria’s Mother, Mrs Tuugasala, called out our names since she’s our team director, so we jogged there using little to no energy and waiting for her to give us instructions.
Instead of giving instructions, she gave us pretty important information which were the matches my team and I were going to play against. She told us that we were going against Panama Road, at Field 3, 10:40 am. I was a little nervous and anxious at first, but I got courage when I warmed up.
Since it’s a long story, I’ll shorten it enough so it can’t be too long but not too short as well. Basically, Mr Bell told us to sit down in our groups, then he threw belts to all of us and asked if there were any problems with it but there were none. Then, Theo did a prayer so we could be safe and there could be no problems. After the prayer, We all went 2 singular files to the school gate, crossed the 2 pedestrian bridges.
While walking, my shoulder kept on hurting since my bag was very heavy so Mrs Tuugasala asked if I needed help with carrying my bags so I said; ‘sure!’ Why not? I had to try and keep my energy. After arriving at Dunkirk Park and walking across schools where they were practising, I felt more nervous and Intimidated when they were looking at us.
After arriving at the spot where no one claimed, Mr Bell opened the sports bag, getting a traditional Mat with patterns on. Then, 3 people helped him to lay down the mat.
Inside the bag was a med-kit, a rugby ball and mouth guards which I looked forward to. After they helped Mr Bell lay down the mat, we all put our bags on the mat and also laid our shoes near our bags since we had to be barefoot.
Mr Bell asked if anyone wanted mouth guards since you didn’t have to have a mouth guard since it’s non contact. I went to Mr Bell for the mouth guard. As he gave me the plastic box with the mouthguard inside, I felt excited, glad, satisfied, all these happy emotions.
To fast forward it more, I wore the mouth guard and drank warm water in my metal bottle and kept it in my mouth while doing warm up drills and training with my friends and team director, Mrs Tuugasala. Our first match is Panama Road in Field 3, 10:40, which is near us. While waiting, we watched matches of schools playing against each other. I want to end it pretty quickly so the match my team played against is Panama Road 1, Panmure Bridge 1, Stanhope 1 and Pt England 1 in Field 7, Field 7, Field 2 and Field 2 at 10:40, 11:40, 12:20 am and 1:20pm. We luckily won against Panama Road and Stanhope but we lost against Panmure Bridge and Pt England.
The people in my team is Annamaria, Geo, Kava, Marii, Franceska and Ezekiel. When it was 2 pm, we took a picture and went back to our school to wait for our parents/caregivers.