Goals galore

Tunohole Mungoba
Engelhard Ugam

One rarely takes into account how much a sport affects the development and growth of a child, the joy it brings and how for those minutes on the field, you see a totally different child from the one in the classroom. Research has proven that not all learners are the same nor have the same capabilities and with that in mind we constantly need to create platforms for the holistic development of the learner child.

The idea of a soccer tournament conceived when the school was sponsored a trophy by Mr. Tommy Viviers and Peter Strauss a former teacher, who furthermore sponsored the medals and engraving. The first ever Westside High Annual Schools Tournament was held over the weekend of 5-7 July 2019 and hosted 8 schools including some from as far as Windhoek.

Organizing a tournament of this magnitude proved to be a mammoth task as there were just too many variables to consider; booking of the fields, accommodation for travelling teams and acquiring the services of FIFA approved referees and, and, and….

The draw for the tournament took place early Saturday and the two pools were assigned their respective stadiums, Pool A was at Vineta and Pool B at the Mondesa Stadium. The group stages saw a lot of thrilling action as schools were fighting to progress to the final round. The coastal schools represented very well and made it to the last leg, seeing off their opponents with big margins. It is worth noting that Swakopmund Secondary School, despite starting with 8 players in their last quarter-final match nearly caused the greatest upset when they held them to a 0-0 draw only to concede a goal in the dying minutes of the game.

Kuisebmond Secondary School made history in lifting the coveted trophy by overcoming a first half deficit against Duneside Combined School, making it an all Walvis Bay final. They walked away with gold medals and N$ 4 500 where the second team took silver medals and N$ 3 200 and third place took N$ 2 200.