Making history

I have grown up surrounded by football and I always used to play it with my cousins and brother. I was quite a tomboy when I was younger, and it meant a lot to me that they allowed me to play it with them.

So naturally, when I first got to high school, I applied for a girl's football team. At that point I've gown out of my tomboy stage, but still had a burning passion for football. I liked playing it, and I took every opportunity to do so.

When I say I applied for the girl's football team... It wasn't a big deal. There wasn't a selection or anything, and it wasn't all that serious. We had self-organised trainings, but it was more or less just about getting to know each other and playing for fun than actual trainings. Then at the start of the February we had matches against other schools.

We lost all of them. Well, technically we won one match, but that was only because the rival team didn't show up.

A year later a lot of girls applied and a professor decided it would be a good idea to have two separate teams. A good one and a little less good one. That was the year we all went to trainings because the professor would mark down who was training. Girls who were on all the trainings would make it to the good team.

We scored a goal that year, yet we still managed to lose all of the matches with both teams.

This year the girls who started the whole girl's football team went off to college and honestly, I thought the whole thing would just go down the drain. They used to do this funny little posters at the start of the school year to attract more girls to join the team and this year there was none of that. We found out there was supposed to be trainings on Fridays, but none of my friends bothered to go. The truth is we finish school early on Fridays and we didn't want to stick around for another hour or two for the training.

A few months just flew by, and we kept saying to ourselves: "We'll go next week."

We never went and before you know it, it's February. That meant we were supposed to play against other schools.

We went there knowing we were going to lose. I mean, we didn't train, we hardly knew people from the team. It was like a recipe for a disaster.

You can imagine how hyper we were when the ball went into the opponent's goal for the first time. And then for the second time. It felt like Christmas all over again.

I think this might be the first match the girl's team from our school has ever won. I'd like to think I contributed to that at least a little bit, because now I'll be able to tell my grandchildren that I was on the team when we won for the first time.

Now cross your fingers because we have another match coming this week!