Ntabayengwe Netball tournament

Apologies for the absence of blog articles over the past week. There is now much for you to catch up on. The first big news item concerns the rip roaringly successful Ntabayengwe Netball tournament. This was a four team contest consisting of four local schools, including my own. Each school entered two teams – one under 11 and one under 13. Tournaments create great excitement in the schools and mean a half day of lessons. They are taken very seriously by the teams involved. They train hard during the week of the event.

I helped prepare the Ntabayenge teams, assisted by Miss Ngobese. Miss Ngobese is a formidable woman. She, like all the female teachers at the school is traditionally built. She walks everywhere with a stick in her hand to remind pupils of the perils of transgressing. And she has a ferocious bark (to match her bite). I am happy to say that she is always sweetness and light with me.

In advance of the tournament each coach was asked to check the ages of their players to ensure fairness. This was not entirely straightforward. It took some time to find a register with all the details of our pupils. Then there were issues with the credibility of the data. For example, one of our sets of identical twins apparently had birth dates two years apart.

Sadly, the information that we could find told us that two of our star players were ineligible. The Principal and Miss Ngobese were not amused. ‘But they must still play’, they told me. ‘Nobody sticks to the rules’, they assured me. ‘The other teams will all be playing older girls. It will be madness not to play Zethu and Nondumissu.’ I stood firm and insisted that ill gotten victory would taste sour. My colleagues were utterly unconvinced.

Our tournament began spectacularly well. We were 8-0 up by half-time in our first U13 game. Our brilliant forwards were scoring almost every time they shot. At the interval I was keen to bring on both of our weaker reserves. Miss Ngobese was horrified. ‘We must not make any changes. The reserves are very weak players. They are very bad. They will make many mistakes.’ Insisting on the changes, our two reserves, now brimming with confidence, entered the action.

We did not lose the match. But we only drew the second half. Miss Ngobese felt absolutely vindicated in her half-time assessment. She was not entirely happy with me. Worse was to follow.

Our second Under 13 game pitted us against Mpontshini Primary School. As foretold by my colleagues some of their players looked distinctly ineligible. Indeed a couple of them had the physique of NBA (USA basketball league) superstars. Our girls were obviously much smaller but I still felt we could compete.

By half-time we were a number of goals to the bad. Several of our team were arguing with each other. Miss Ngobese looked livid. I tried to lift their spirits with lots of inspirational platitudes. I insisted that we were as good as them. That we just had to believe. That we mustn’t criticise each other. Unfortunately my words were immediately drowned out by the following exchange:

Miss Ngobese: We are not good.
Principal: Yes. I smell defeat. I smell it very strongly.

Sadly the Principal’s nostrils were aromatically accurate. But we won our last game. And the Under 11s performed excellently. Still an air of post tournament tension existed in the staff room. I couldn’t help hearing reference to the giraffes from Mpontshini. I escaped as quickly possible for the weekend.