doing my bit for society

Anyone who knows me would know that futsal and I are synonymous. And those who know me well would know that I truly believe we have tremendous talent in this sport that’s just waiting to be discovered and polished, if only Azalina would bloody well do something about it.

Well, to wait around for any menteri to actually practice what she preaches about "developing futsal at grassroot level" is like waiting for khinzirs to fly, for serious. And so to not waste any more time just hoping on our behinds, a few of my fellow Wildcatz plus a good futsal mate from Carroad ventured early on Saturday morning to SM Bandar Utama, with the objective of teaching some wide-eyed teenage chicas to play ball.

There were five of us, 29 of them, and only 12 balls. A rather dodgy equation, this we were fully aware of, but hey the show had to go on!

We started with the boring-but-vital basics—make sure your ankle is locked, use the side of your foot to pass, stop the ball with the sole of your foot, etc.

We let them get comfy with the ball and taught them very basic movement with it (We said, "Imagine that it’s your little sister; you gotta make sure that she’s always with you—don't let her get in front of you, nor behind. You gotta always be in control." Their response? "Ahh, we’ll treat it like our boyfriends." Cheeky lot!)

We tortured them a little (heh) with sprints. And tormented them (heh heh) by playing "monkey."

And finally, we divided them into four teams and watched while they went wild against each other.

Gotta say that all the delight and excitement on their faces more than made up for me having to wake up at ungodly hours that morning, for serious.

One-up to us—you ain't got nothin' on this, Dato'!

*Note: the obvious discontentment with the Sports & Youth Ministry stemmed from the cancellations of major sporting events in KL (namely the Asian X Games and especially the KL World 5s) for the lame-ass reason of "these events take up too much money; money that would be better off spent for developments at grassroot level." What development?!