TP v NYP ‘11

Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive
It's the eye of the tiger, it's the cream of the fight
Rising up to the challenge of our rival
The last known survivor stalks his prey in the night
And he's watching us all in the eye of the tiger

I can never be more proud of our girls than I am today. NYP has always been the toughest opponent we faced on the pitch since the beginning in Year1, this has always been painfully obvious especially since the final scores were ridiculously bad. Bad as in they scored more than five almost close to ten, while we got nothing. We got trashed for two years, and today our hard work finally paid off.

It’s the first of our matches that I actually felt like I contributed to our victories, I was so so so so surprised that I managed to keep our clean sheet throughout the first half. Our team scored first, and the opponents fought back even more harder and the game got rough. I dived for a save and even though it was a shortcorner, I managed to get it out. The impact though was pretty bad, my arm hurts now and I can foresee bruises tomorrow when I wake up.
Then came the worst part of the game; Sihui got hit in the face around the eye region. She went down and when she finally rolled over, blood was flowing through her fingers which she kept pressed against the wound. It was the worst feeling I’ve ever experience, I felt so much anger and sadness that I started tearing and scolding the players. So thankful for the other teammates who were there to stop me because it’ll definitely be catastrophic if the goalie got yellowcard out too right? S was subbed out, which made me determined more than ever to make her injuries worth it. I think the anger sort of pushed past my fears of facing the nationals, and I managed to stop multiple shots afterwards.

The sad thing afterwards though was that the opponents got a wrongly-awarded penalty shot, that allowed them to score against us during the last twenty minutes. It left us with a tie 1-1, and what sucks more is that it shouldn’t even be counted as the shot was actually a foul ball. So technically even though we didn’t win, our entire team was more than happy with the results. Sure, we may be the ones grasping on the short end of the straw here, but the feeling of satisfaction we had at the end of the match, it was euphoria. Being trashed to pulp seemed like it happened ten years ago, I was crying tears of happiness, especially when Joyce hugged me and gave me a pep talk. It’s this kind of atmosphere you can’t get elsewhere that makes me feel like hockey will forever remain a huge part of my life. It’s also the captain that we have that continued to play on for us when we’re one man down, even though she was injured badly and needed stitches. Remember how the previous match, a NP girl was applauded for like crazy after she got hit and while walking out of the pitch, she cheered for her team? Look at ours, a captain who walked back on the pitch to play alongside with us even when it hurts. Tell me that isn’t worth what we’re doing, what effort we’ve put in.

It doesn’t matter if we didn’t leave this match winning it. I know it’s a mood dampener to realize that one stupid foul can make you feel like all that running you did went to waste, but we all know that in each others’ hearts, we remain champions :) I wasn’t expecting anything like this, but like what Sihui said, this will be the best match we’ve ever had in three years. Everyone will forever remember how close we were, I’m so damn proud of us. I may be a little sulky about staying in my little white box as a goalie, but it’s being a goalie in this team that makes me feel like nothing would get better than this. It’s the hugging and tears that’ll help me remember this day by. TWO MORE GAMES. We know what we’re capable of now, so all we have to do is to keep it up, LET’S GO GIRLS!