Primary School Ball Games

Football is Life...  for at least the next few weeks. 

All across Kenya this past week, Primary School Ball Games began!  The Ball Games include: boys & girls football, boys & girls volleyball and girls netball.  These games are more like a series of mini-tournaments than a typical sports season that is played-out over a few months.  The students begin playing for their schools and competing against other local schools.  At the end of the one-day competition, it’s not the best school that moves on to the next level, but the best players. At each level, the best players are selected to make up the team for the next level.

Joe coaches the Christ’s Gift Academy girls’ football team.  He’s been training with the girls (as well as the boys) for the past 2.5 months since the school year began in January.  The team is excited and ready for the “Base” competition, Friday, Mar 21^st.  One challenge for CGA teams is that local primary schools often have much older students, which usually means they are bigger and more experienced than our students. In rural places like Mbita, many students join primary school at an older age or drop out and come back to school after a few years.  Some even decide to come back to school just before the sports competitions start up so they can play! When it’s sports season, local public schools often excel since they have 8^th graders who might be 16 or 17 years old; whereas, most CGA 8^th graders are 13 or 14 years old.  Since it’s the best players who advance to the next level and not the school as a whole, our best CGA players have good chances of moving on to compete at higher levels, even if we don’t finish in first place.

After the Base Games with the CGA team, Joe will move on to assist with the selection of the Zonal team which he will then also coach. He will continue in this role up through the Divisionals, Districts, Counties, and Regionals.  Beyond Regionals is Nationals where Joe has also assisted in the past. It’s a privilege to be asked by the various levels of government sports officials to be the coach, yet it’s a challenging position only having 2-3 days of training with a new group of players; many who you’ve never coached before and girls who’ve never played together!  Daneen will be on the sidelines assisting in whatever way she can be helpful. Often ensuring the players have drinking water, assisting with injuries or medical problems, organizing lunch, being an encouragement and making sure Coach puts on sunscreen! :-)

Since Ball Games are specifically school-based sports, the Suba Lakers do not participate as their own team. Instead, all our girls play for their respective primary schools.  We have 22 girls throughout the District who will be participating and representing 12 different schools.  Each one hopes to make it to the next level, with their goal being Nationals.  Most of them will easily move on to the Zonal, Divisional, District and the County level.  A few of them also have a great chance of making it to Regionals and even Nationals!

Last weekend, we held a training day for our Suba Laker primary school girls.  The main purpose of the weekend was to not only prepare them physically for the Ball Games, but also mentally. It’s an exciting time of the year and sports are designed to be fun and competitive.  Yet, the season of Ball Games comes with many distractions and temptations for the players.  The more success they have on the field, the more time they are not in school.  There’s a tendency for some players to totally forget about school work during the 4 weeks of ball games.   It’s especially challenging for the girl players because there are many boy players with ulterior motives in befriending girls, especially girls who look so good on the field!  The boys are often much older and looking for younger girls to seduce and take advantage of.  We encouraged the girls to always prioritize God and academics, show good character, make wise choices and shine as great leaders for their team! 

In the past few years, at least 4-5 Suba Lakers have been among the 20 girls from the Nyanza Region who have been selected for Nationals.  This year with great players like June, Lillian, Winnie, Lavender, & Lenser and others like Lucia, Phylice, Apeto and Mourine; the Suba Lakers are sure to have many representatives at Nationals!       

For us, working with the girls’ football teams is a great opportunity to set a good example of how to play and compete in a positive way.  Sports throughout Kenya is often exploited and focused solely on winning; regardless of rules or regulations.  We have a chance to develop the players’ talents and show them the best way to compete in sports.  Mostly, it’s a great opportunity to express the importance of putting God first and giving him Glory; win or lose.

We’re looking forward to few great weeks on the football pitch.