First Inter School Football Tournament at the Academy

The early morning practice sessions, the run for classes and the evening practice sessions, the Barcelona football camp, the fatigue and eventually the euphoria all found a spot when we won the first Aga Khan Academy,Hyderabad Inter School Football Tournament. Three teams took part in the tournament from various parts of the city: International School Hyderabad with its A team, Meredian School and Bhavans Secunderabad, who were the district winners and the strong contenders for the cup.

The first day’s matches saw the AKA,H team lose to the favourites, Bhavans, in a penalty shootout. The second day’s matches would decide the finalists and we had an easy win against Meredian, scoring 4-1, with a “hatrick” from Aalim Makhani. The next match was against ISH and we were quite relaxed and changed our strategy to accommodate our substitutes.

But things did not work out as we expected. Our opponents seemed to have changed their strategy and we were up against a challenge. The AKA,H captain stuck and the game changed in our favour, with ISH putting on a good fight. When the final whistle was blown the scores were AKA,H 2 and ISH 1. We had learnt a lesson not to take things easy and to attack immediately.

We were excited to be in the finals and also quite stressed about our opposition. Playing on our home ground with all our friends and peers watching, there was a lot resting on us to win this tournament. The British Deputy High Commissioner was the chief guest for the finals and he met the teams and was keen to watch a well fought match.

The strategy was to attack at once after kick-off and it worked very well for us. Though evenly fought, we could feel our training take over when we played our opponents. After our first goal, no one could stop Aalim and Faizaan with their super ball play and dribbles, scoring another two more to seal the match, 3-0. To be the proud winners, especially when you are the first team, knows no boundaries. This moment and the victory as a team, I am sure will last us all a lifetime.  

Submitted by Leela Krishna (DP2 student)