People want to know.
Who we are.
So we tell them.
We are the tigers.
The mighty, mighty tigers.
GO TIGERS!
I never thought I'd be writing about sports. We are a member of SAISA, the South Asian Inter-Scholastic Association, which consists of ten schools from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Competition involves a lot of time and expense, so only one tournament is held for each sport. The first sport this year was volleyball, and we hosted it last weekend.
We held spirit week the week leading up to the tournament. Every day was a different dress up day. I found pajama day to be the most comfortable. Next was opposites day. It used to be cross-dressing day, but some people found that term offensive. Always wanting to put in 100% for my students, I wore a sari (and a nice one at that). They're actually like a toga. OK, a toga with fancy patterns and sparkle. Maybe I'm rationalizing. The kids loved it though. Then we finished up with dress up day and black and white day. Remembering to dress (in)appropriately every day is a lot of work.
I had to work the whole weekend because I was sponsoring the video club, and we broadcast the entire tournament. We ended up having 1800 viewers from around the world, including over 80 for the final game - a record for viewership! I've always liked volleyball, so it wasn't a hardship. I was amazed at how different it is now (or at least now over here) - the kids are giants (even the girls' teams are taller than the boys' basketball teams were when I was in high school) and the scoring is much different (25 point games; scoring when you don't serve; and serves can hit the net). It all makes for faster paced and more exciting games.
We hosted the competitors and coaches in our homes, so I had a coach from India staying with me. Unfortunately we were both so busy that we never saw each other unless it was breakfast. The tournament ended up running 2 or 3 hours late each day, partially because of close matches and partially from the many power outages (the sodium lights took 5-10 minutes to warm up again each time the power went out, which was about every hour). Our teams did really well, with both the boys and girls making the finals. The girls lost in three games, but the boys lost 15-13 in the 5th game. They were the scrappy underdogs, and almost won it all. We were all so proud of them. Even a week later, I get a little teary thinking about that final game.
I can't believe how high these kids are jumping.
