I've joined a local netball team run by Precious from Sithembakuye. Yesterday our team, the Mermaids, played our first match together against a team from Hillcrest High School. I last played netball 12 years ago at University and so I was glad that we weren't playing the first team from such a prestigious school! We hadn't had time to train together so it really was in at the deep end.
Thankfully for me, our team is very good on attack and my position is Goal Keeper, so I didn't see much of the ball but managed to defend ok when it did come my way. Netball is a big sport here for girls, but we also have to contend with the heat of Africa. It's supposed to be getting cooler now for Winter, but this week it's been super warm and sunny once again. Yesterday it was about 35 degrees!!
During the first half of the match, my opponent - the GS - was really rather short, and totally intimidated when she saw she was against me. It was fairly easy for me to put my arms up and totally block the goal from her!! They wised up to this and swapped to a taller player for the second half!!
We won 8 -1. It's the first match in my life where I've been on the winning side! Memories came flooding back of our College Netball team at Uni, where we were thrashed 40 -1 by Hatfield College and they never stopped fighting and pressing on for the whole game even though they were obviously going to win! The Hillcrest team were so glad of their 1 goal but we were extremely happy with our win. We were supposed to playing in a tournament this weekend but it's been postponed, hopefully to a weekend when it's not quite so scorching!
