Irinah Dynamites: March 2016

ATHLETICS DAY 2016

In the run-up to the Day

Our athletes went out of their way

To run and jump and build up muscles

In preparation for their tussles

…and this is where the wells of my poetry skills run dry. Moving on…

The weather gods were being cranky these past few weeks, so despite our attempts to squeeze in more training, downpours out of the blue hampered our practice sessions. It was annoying but a little rain wasn’t going to stop us in the grand scheme of things.

On Sports Day, the sky was a sombre bluish-grey, contrasting with the little multi-coloured flags around the tracks. Nonetheless, we went on with our business – crowds shrieked as runners streaked past, a teacher-in-charge hollered through a loudspeaker, while Houseparents and sixth formers frantically search for athletes.

Then it rained.

At first, most of the audience sought cover in the stands, but then more and more people trickled out to cheer for the athletes. The rain on our parade didn’t dampen our crusade, baby! I also spotted Irinians giving encouragement to friends in other houses, despite being rivals. Those were uplifting sights indeed. A special mention needs to be given to those who participated in the long-jump and triple-jump events – it must have been unpleasant to leap into a pit full of soaked sand. I salute them.

In the end, we continued our Irinah legacy by being crowned champions in the senior girls’ category. On the flipside, we came in last for the junior girls’ category due to two of main athletes suffering injuries. However, as our house captain assured us the night before Sports Day, as long as we gave it our all, the results are secondary to our journey together. Aww.

Enough mush for now; I’m going to proceed with blowing my trumpets for whatever accomplishments we have, ‘cause we have several. A few other achievements are as follows (this list is by no means extensive):

· OVERALL GIRLS’ CHAMPION!

8x50m senior girls’ category – 1^st place! Our teamwork is on point!
8x50m junior girls’ category – 2^nd place!
Moon broke the record for 400m! She is the reason why we have day and night – the sun can never catch the moon. (By the way, when I asked her how many medals she won, she replied only 3. How dare she participate in 3 events and only win all 3 gold medals? Tsk tsk. I’m disappointed. You can do better than that, Munira Mahmud. Should’ve gotten 4½ medals out of 3, maybe.)

There are many people who contributed a lot to athletics, but I want to give a shout-out to someone who’s too nice to draw attention to her efforts: Kamilia. She greeted me with two bizarre sights on the same day in the week before Sports Day, if I’m not mistaken. First, I saw her sitting on the floor in front of her room surrounded by flecks of damp grass and mud, fitting spikes to multiple pairs of grubby sports shoes without regard to the dirt and stench. Then later I saw her clambering around on the (rather dangerous) slope outside Ms Angie’s house, trying to place pairs of (washed?) wet shoes in the sunshine so that they’d dry on time because apparently the rays of the sun don’t reach the laundry area downstairs.

Kamilia, you are an angel. But don’t overburden yourself, okay? Let the puny mortals manage by themselves sometimes or the feathers on your great white wings will droop and fray from overexertion.

A suggestion for next year’s athletics: get the principal to offer a sacrifice to the rain gods to ensure their mercifulness on Sports Day.

P.S.: Happy birthday Grace J