Lightening Online

Right now I’m feeling weary and a little overwhelmed. It feels like the events of the past 2 days have somehow been a dream. I have so much I want to tell you about that I don’t know where to start. I guess the best place to start is the beginning and make my way through what has happened. It may take me a couple of posts to get through it all. Hopefully you don’t find it too boring!

Lead Up To The Grand Final

The week in the lead up to the Grand Final was a roller coaster ride of emotions. When I read this post, I wondered if the coach was thinking of not playing me in the Grand Final. To be honest, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she didn’t. We lost the first final we played in by 2 goals and only won the second finals game we played in the last quarter. The Grand Final was likely to be a close game and as a coach, you want to give your team the best edge you can.

I wasn’t even sure I WANTED to play. I did. But at the same time I was really scared. The last thing I wanted to do was be responsible for my team losing. Not that you can necessarily put it down to 1 player. I was torn between not wanting to play if we lost because I knew I’d constantly question whether it was my fault. At the same time, I knew that I would find it hard to feel a part of it if we did win and I hadn’t played at all.

On top of all that, I was having a really rough week (unrelated to netball) and not sleeping well. I wasn’t even sure I would be UP to the task if my coach did decide to let me take the court.

So I said nothing, and waited. Trying to prepare myself for either eventuality and knowing that my coach would play me if she possibly could.

The Grand Final Game

In the end I got to play my 1 quarter (which was all I wanted - just enough to be a part of the action). AND the team won. Phew! So it was all good.

It was a nail biter of a game. We were down by 4 goals at the end of the first half. I hate it when we go down in a quarter I play because I constantly second guess myself, trying to work out if it was my fault we went down.

During the second half I screamed myself silly. To the point that after every goal that was shot I got dizzy from screaming so much.

Toward the end of the 3rd quarter our goalies picked up their accuracy (it was a feral day - horrible for the poor goalies) and the opposition dropped their accuracy. I’m sure there were many other factors that played a part in our winning but at the end of the day WE WON!!!

Anyway, enough rambling on. Here are some photo’s. I’m wishing I took some photo’s of the action but I was a bit too intent on the game to even think about the camera.

Here is our beautiful captain giving the acceptance speech for the shield. She did such a wonderful job!!! It isn’t easy speaking off the cuff like that.

The presentations take place pretty much straight after the game. Here is most of the team just before the medals are presented:

Here’s a shot of the coach. This is the happiest I’ve seen her look all season . I wonder if she’ll tell us what was being said at the time?

Here is the team with the shield. There were quite a few photographer’s and Farmboy didn’t get to take a more front angled shot so this is the best we have. I’m sitting down the front with my “little sister” . I think if I call my coach mum though she might slap me.

As things turned out, we were the only team in the club to win a Premiership so we’ve been in the limelight a bit. While I am disappointed for the other 2 teams that played in a Grand Final and didn’t win, in some ways that may have worked out to our advantage. As the lowest of the senior netball teams, we are sometimes the “forgotten grade”. By being the only team to actually win a Premiership this year, we haven’t been overshadowed by any of the “perceived more important teams” winning.

Well, so far this post has taken me most of the morning to compose (amongst interruptions) so I’m going to save the Presentations for another post. If you’ve read the comments on my last post you’ll have gathered that I have some news to share. I will post about it soon, I promise.