By Christie Soo (19A01B) and Catherine Kausikan (19A01B)
Soccer Girls is a CCA filled with muddy boots, tiring trainings, and lots of excited shouting from a team of passionate girls. If you’re interested in joining us, all you need is an open mind and a willingness to learn. Our CCA is a developmental one in RJ, and as such there are no strict prerequisites expected of you! The trial will include some simple physical tests on your agility, speed, basic ball skills and game sense. While the sport is physically demanding, there’s no need to be intimidated, as fitness can be trained! In fact, many previous members weren’t from sports CCAs in secondary school. Our trials are open to anybody and everybody who has an interest in the sport.
Warm welcome aside, we do expect a lot from our members character-wise. Soccer trainings will be tough: the harsh sun, gruelling physical demands, sweat and undoubtedly, the mud. It’s a contact sport, so expect to be roughed up by teammates and opponents alike. Despite being a developmental sport, our commitment expectations are equal to that of any other competitive sports CCA, perhaps even more so, us being acutely aware of our lack of experience.
Trainings take place three times a week:
Monday PT (3.30pm – 6.30pm), Tuesday (4.30pm – 8.00pm) and Friday (4.30pm – 8.00pm) and training continues through the holidays, only taking a short break to prepare for CTs and Promos. Soccer is a team sport and as such each member is an essential part of training, which is why commitment in attendance is expected of every single member.
Furthermore, this is likely to be your first time playing competitive soccer (seeing as not many secondary schools offer girls soccer as a CCA), and you will meet many new people you will come to call your teammates. It is important to be willing to try new things and meet new people. Be open to learning; soccer is a positional game. While many of you may already have certain preferences and having your own opinion is respected, no matter what— the team always comes first. Learn to enjoy the nuances of every role and the thrill of stepping onto the pitch as a team rather than an individual player. If you embrace the sport for what it is, the sport will embrace you too.
Soccer will teach you many things: you will overcome the fear of failure when your newbie ass gets trashed by Republic Poly 6-0, feel the desire to win rather than just to be happy with “not losing” when your team emerges victorious for the first time. Beyond this, you learn to think beyond yourself: when you see your team cry for the first time after a particularly bad match, you’ll realise that you’re never in this alone. Every player is crucial in ensuring success for your team, and how much you invest in the sport affects not just you but your teammates as well. Finally, soccer teaches you to trust and to be trusted: there will always be a teammate covering your back or alongside you if (and when) you lose the ball (although you’ll eventually learn not to!)
And the list goes on, but we should really leave it to you to come and experience for yourself. Times will get tough and occasionally the intensity may get to you, but we hope that all future members will have the courage and the sense of responsibility to pull through, not just for your own personal growth but for the teammates you will be playing with and playing for. Soccer has become a part of us: our shared love for the sport and the pride we take in playing a good game. It’s love, pure and simple. If there’s one thing we can promise you, it’s that you’ll get out of in what you put into it. CCA is short in JC: When you step off that pitch after your final game at the end of this year and a half, those memories are going to stay in your heart for a long time to come.
It’s those hours of sweat – the hard work and immeasurable effort our batch has put in the past year that has made us the team we are now, and if you saw us back then you would’ve never have thought we’d come as far as we have now. But for all our faults, and the rough patches we’ve gone through, there’s one thing we don’t lack – the desire to win. We fight hard in every game because we know we’re coming up from down below, loving every minute because it’s the accumulated validation of months of gruelling practice. And as we begin the call for new members, we would like to take this moment to thank our batch for everything in the past year and begin our first and final season together where we do hope we will sincerely kick-ass.
Desire. Hard work. Believe.