The Makhanda Khaya Majola Week was as good as it gets

 

The first Khaya Majola Week I went to was in 1989. It was still the Nuffield Week back then and it was in Johannesburg. That was the first year that I was engaged as a freelance journalist – I was still a teacher then – and I was to cover every week, bar one or two, as a journalist until 2018 when the Saturday Star School Sport supplement was canned by the new owners of Independent Media.

By then, I’d become so much a part of proceedings that the organisers – more about them later – found a way to keep me coming.

I have to admit to an increasing level of grumpiness as I’ve grown older and I’ve, unkindly, been accused be of being cynical and complaining. I suppose I’d have to agree, to an extent, with that and that I went to Makhanda for the 2023 Khaya Majola Week with a less than fully positive attitude.

I got back home on Thursday cured, for now at least. I guess what I needed was to meet up with and mingle with people who make big sacrifices to provide opportunities for schoolboy cricketers to play the game, and to be engulfed in the spirit of generosity and the attention to detail that characterises the hospitality you get when these events are held in a small town.

And so it was in Makhanda. The tournament began with an official opening at which a guest speaker was to address the boys. A mistake, I thought. The players don’t want to hear what some self-important has-been has to say, they just want to play. But I was wrong, the speaker was Adi Birrell who has a coaching CV as long as your arm. He imparted some homespun Eastern Cape wisdom and his message was aimed straight at the players. It was spellbinding, and it set the tone for what was to come.

Graeme College – the Grahamstown school that isn’t St Andrew’s or Kingswood – was the venue and at that opening function I met Kevin Watson, the headmaster of Graeme, and Gregg van Molendorff, his deputy and the man in charge of the local organising committee. They were in our faces, in the nicest possible way, for the rest of the week.

Mr Watson is just remarkable. I’ve been to many of these sorts of things. But I’ve never seen the headmaster of the host school take ownership of the event the way he did. He was out there supervising the rolling of the wicket, painting the lines himself, and pulling the covers off – you don’t see that every day, but it went further. His mission seemed to be to make everyone feel at home and enjoying themselves. And at the closing dinner at the end of it, I watched him go around the room thanking everyone for their contribution. Even me, who really didn’t do that much.

He had a willing and able accomplice in Gregg van Molendorff. I’ve come across organisers of big events who pay attention to the details and make sure the proceedings run like clockwork. And I’ve seen others who are more people orientated and concentrate on relationships with the visitors. He was both, and then some. Indefatigable, always smiling and completely incapable of saying no to any request.

They were the locals. The CSA people were also there. Morgan Pillay, the tournament director for 28 years now, is simply the best sports administrator I’ve ever come across. Niels Momberg, for many years CSA’s manager of Youth and Tertiary Cricket, has been promoted to another role and in that one he is in charge of umpires and scorers, among other things. So, guess what? He used that as an excuse to spend the week in Makhanda anyway, and miss yet another birthday with his family.

Morgan’s birthday is the day before Neils’s, by the way, so he has also been away for it for close to 30 years now.

The men in charge set the tone and everyone else involved with running the event followed suit. At some tournaments and festivals it’s all about exclusion. Not everyone’s invited to the functions, you have to have the right accreditation to get into certain areas and they kick you out at closing time.

Not at this one. You got the idea that, of course you’re welcome – they made sure of that.

And then there was the setting. The schools of Grahamstown are pristine exceptions to the rule in a town that’s crumbling. The potholed roads have become famous, as have the wild donkeys roaming the streets.

There were matches at the clubs of the Farmers League in the surrounding areas. We took a drive to Salem, reportedly the oldest cricket field in the country. It was magical.

My colleague Hannes Nienaber and I had a beer in the pub there – he has a strong regard for the history and traditions of the game, and in that spirit, we also had to have a beer at the Rat and Parrot, the heart of university life in the town – although it was eerily quiet with the students not there.

It’s all about cricket and the players, of course, and I got the feeling that they were having a great time too. It showed in their play. There were some great performances and they can only have benefitted from playing on those fields, in those historic settings.

I wrote once before that if I was in charge the Khaya Majola Week will always be held in Potchefstroom. The fields are great and they are all close to each other, and the people there are just so nice. After the week gone by, I think we can alternate between Potch and Makhanda – it’s even better down there.

My top 10 school sports moments in 2023

 

I’ve been compiling these little end-of-the-year top 10 highlights lists since about 2009 when the Saturday Star began running a school sport supplement. At first it was a way to fill a page during the “silly season” in December – when there had to be a newspaper, but there was no real news to fill it.

I got to enjoy doing it and there were those who enjoyed reading it, it seems, so I kept it going on this platform after School Sport was closed down. From the beginning I made it a rule that I would only include games and events that I had actually attended, or watched on TV, at the least. That became more challenging when I stopped working and there were no longer sponsored trips to weeks and tournaments and I began to rely on the rare televised schools games and the bigger interprovincial competitions that did get aired.

And then, along came SuperSport Schools. It’s been a game-changer for me and my trivial list year can include, as you’ll see, references to the School Boat Race, and the SA Schools Water Polo Champs, and I can say I was there – via my laptop and an HDMI cable.

1 So, highlight number one in 2023 was the growth in depth and quality of the SuperSport Schools coverage. I was able to watch the biggest rugby derbies, the interprovincial hockey and rugby weeks, the Boat Race and the SA Schools Water Polo tournament, while never leaving my couch. Who could have imagined?

2 The St Benedict’s rowing and Northcliff athletics records are still stuck, although there may have been a slight shift this year. Northcliff duly won the Joburg co-ed schools athletics interhigh for the 25^th year in a row, but they squeaked home by just 4 points over Rand Park. A disqualification here, or a dropped relay baton there, and the unbeaten run would have been history! Bennies were comfortable winners of the SA Schools Rowing Championships for the 29th consecutive year and they aren’t going anywhere. They also won the schools boat race for the sixth year in a row.

3 The St Stithians Girls water polo team were unbeaten in 60 games during the 2022/2023 season, That includes winning six national tournaments, including the big ones – the St Peter’s, Reef Cup and their own Saints Invitational.

4 It was quite a sporting year for the St Stithians family of schools. Their boys 1^st hockey team won the Aitken Cup – ending Jeppe’s streak – and their girls won the Pullen Trophy. That’s the first time that’s happened, and then they had four players selected for the SA U19 cricket team: Esosa Aihevba, Lhuan-Dre Pretorius, Richard Seletswane and Kwena Maphaka.

5 Speaking of dominant schools, there’s SACS hockey. Their 1^st team was unbeaten and ended the year as the number one ranked team. There were 11 SACS players in the WP team that won the U18 Interprovinicial Tournament. Six of them made the SA Schools team and a further four were in the SA U16 side.

6 The big schools rugby derby clashes are another perennial highlight for me. Thanks to SuperSport Schools I was able to see the Midlands derby between Michaelhouse and Hilton, K Day in Grahamstown, and the Paarl Interschools extravaganza. But the one I attended was the KES vs Jeppe double header – possibly the second biggest of them all. They were thrillers, played in front of capacity crowds and the honours were split, one win each.

7 A few weeks later we had the Rugby Youth Weeks, The U19 Academy Week was in Joburg and The Golden Lions beat Western Province in the “main game”, which wasn’t that surprising seeing that there were four or five players in the Lions side who certainly should have been at the Craven Week instead. The Jeppe/KES midfield combination was great to watch and how those players were not considered good enough for the A team can only be attributed to one-eyed selections. Instead, the selectors opted for a two-school strategy – Monument and Helpmekaar – which didn’t work: the Craven side lost two out of their three matches.  

8 and 9 – a couple of outstanding individuals, Jeppe’s Jaydon Brooker and David Teeger of King Edward. Brooker achieved a rare double, selection for both the Southern Gauteng U18 hockey team, and the Central Gauteng Lions cricket team. He was player of the tournament at the hockey interprovincial and made the SA Schools and U19 teams, Unfortunately, he has had to miss the Khaya Majola Week because he is away with the National U21 hockey team at the Junior World Cup in Kuala Lampur.

The David Teeger story is a remarkable one. He is the captain of the Central Gauteng Lions, and the SA U19 teams, although the latter almost got derailed after Cricket South Africa launched an inquiry into a pro-Israel comment he made when accepting an award. Luckily, sanity prevailed in that and he will lead the SA team at the U19 World Cup in January. The big Teeger story of the year, however, was when his KES teammates turned up at his house early one Saturday morning to walk to school with him. He comes from an Orthodox Jewish family and he chooses not to ride in a car on the Sabbath. So, he walks to school for home games and stays in a B&B on Friday night for away ones. That kind of commitment has to be admired – and it shows in his cricket.

10 The year ended with the SA Schools Water Polo tournament in Gqberha. It’s a massive event, played from U12 to U19, boys and girls. I don’t really approve of the scale of it, I don’t think provincial colours should be handed out so liberally. For me the two U19 finals are what it’s really all about, and they were thrillers. Central Gauteng won the girls game by two goals over Western Province  and WP won the boys – in a penalty shootout after they equalised with five second to go against Gauteng. It was edge-of-the-seat stuff.

11 Here’s an 11^th, just because I can. Back in May when Jeppe hosted Affies, they couldn’t field as many sides as the Pretoria powerhouse, so they asked Springs Boys’ High to fill in the gaps. The Springs 1^st team played Affies 3rds. Affies won, although I can’t remember the score, and afterwards the two teams posed, arm in arm, for a photo. An unlikely meeting between schools who exists in different dimensions, and a moving occasion.

Gauteng schools water polo - massive.

 

I was at the Gauteng Schools Water Polo capping ceremony at St Peter’s on Tuesday night, and it was quite amazing. The province is sending 22 teams to the Interprovincial tournament in Gqeberha this weekend. That’s 304 players, 40 coaches, 12 managers and seven referees.

I can’t think of many touring contingents that big, and they were all presented with certificates and scrolls on Tuesday. The ceremony was held in the air-conditioned indoor basketball facility at St Peter’s  – which made the two and a half hours it took bearable, given the heat we’ve been having in Joburg this past week. They’ve done it before, obviously, it ran like clockwork, every player got his or her moment in the spotlight and tribute was paid to some special individuals, in an appropriate manner.

All very impressive and very different to the days when I used organise these evenings. We only had two, later three, teams back then and we’d have a braai for the boys and their parents (no girls polo back then) and get someone like Hennie van Niekerk or Billy Otto to do the hand-shaking. It’s come a long way.

I’ve been critical about them letting it get so big. I’ve always felt provincial competition is an elite, not a mass participation event, and handing certificates to over 300 players is not elite. On the other hand, though, I agree that its wonderful to have that many teenagers actively engaged in healthy sport, among their friends at this time of the year – they could be doing far less positive things with their time. Water polo is a better game than most when it comes to a vehicle for teaching values and life skills. And I applaud the sacrifices made by so many teachers, coaches and administrators to make it possible.

Pros and cons to both arguments, I guess.

Where I do have some strong views is when it comes to the age at which children should be introduced to serious competitive sport. There are under-12 and under-13 categories at SA Schools polo these days, That’s 11 and 12 year-olds! Should they be introduced to the joys and heartaches of team selection, the arduous training that is part of the game, and the seriousness of a professional tournament at that age? Shouldn’t they rather be learning the basics through game situations that focus on the fun of it, with no scores being kept?

Still, seeing all those shiny smiling faces, and that array of school uniforms, on Tuesday night warmed my heart. The organisers pledged, at the ceremony, to make every step they take educationally accountable and that player safety is their priority. You can only applaud that.