I spent derby day watching 12-year-old girls playing hockey

 

 

My sporting highlight of the weekend? ………… Well, not being at the KES vs Jeppe derby game for a change.

I see Jeppe won it by 12 points, after losing the 1^st leg by 10 back in April, which makes them narrow winners over the two games which sounds about right, given their respective seasons.

I decided I didn’t have the stomach to face the six hours of unrelenting struggle that is attending this particular fixture – they are basically jamming seven-odd thousand spectators into facilities designed for three of four thousand, and nothing good comes of that.

I was going to stay at home, but then I opened an invitation sent to me (I sometimes get invited to things by people who think I still work for a newspaper). It was to attend a primary schools girls hockey festival, marking the 145^th Anniversary of St Mary’s DSG in Pretoria.

Those 145 years caught my attention. They mean St Mary’s DSG was founded in 1879, that’s nine years before St Mary’s in Joburg - widely regarded as our oldest school - which I assumed was also the oldest school in Gauteng.

Those who know me won’t be surprised to hear that I had to find out what that was all about. OK, so I was going to Pretoria later on any way to watch the Test match on TV with friends, but I thought watching some 11 and 12-year-old girls playing hockey would be a nice change from the gladiatorial spectacle that is a KES vs Jeppe game.

So, I made the trip up the R21. I’m so glad I did. Apart from the fact that those children were playing on a field marked with white lines, and that they were busting a gut in the cause of their teams, the sporting action, and the day, could not have been more different, and it was glorious to see.

And I got to meet great people. Mrs Odelle Howard, the Executive Head of St Mary’s DSG addressed my curiosity about the school’s history and opened up the school building to show me some historic pictures and things – it has piqued my interest to dig deeper. Later, I met Melinda Vos, their Director of Sport. She’s got an educational take on sport in a school that they should bottle and send to some of the people that I’ve come across who are running sport in schools.

Meanwhile, the little girls were playing hockey. No scores were kept – they never even switched the electronic scoreboard on, and they were up for another game every 40 minutes or so, all three days long.

There were some over-excited parents, but that’s their job, I guess. Everyone was clearly having a great time.

I’m glad Jeppe won the derby game, but I’m not sorry that I wasn’t there to see it.