All GOOD THINGS!
She only started playing rugby over a year ago. I didn’t know anything about the sport. You ask me about sports and I will tell you, “I’m Puerto Rican. Baseball is pretty much embedded into our DNA”. Rugby? No. Nothing. Zilch. Zero, Nada. I always thought rugby was the Australian version of American Football. Based on what I’ve known about rugby, I said to my overprotective mentality of myself, “Honestly, woman, are you gonna allow your daughter to play?” It just seems barbaric, manly, and above all, not a sport suitable for MY child to learn. All she would get out of it would be an injury, a serious injury!”
That was my way of thinking. Funny thing. That all changed one day…
My husband got invited to play for the Odd Socks rugby team at the Jakarta 10’s Rugby Tournament. It’s a team composed of a bunch of sporty man (overweight, overstressed, over the hill men that truly believed, somewhere in the back of their minds, they can still play like 20 year olds). My daughter and I went to support him. We wished him luck. Funny how he sucked in his stomach before being called to his death. The massive physical trauma he was about to conquer with his teammates was foreseeable. Believe me. The ambulance was ready for all of them!
As we waited for that special moment to unfold, Sofia drew her attention to the kids. She already knew some of them from her school, so the excitement to watch them play was far greater than seeing her dad get ambushed. Her interest in them getting into the pitch, running with the ball, scoring a try, tackling the opponents…, the parents supporting their kids with annoying yells of “support, support” and “let’s go, Komodos, let’s go”…, the whole nine yards…was contagious. I went over to her, and before we knew it, we were doing the same thing too. It was like do or die-screaming, “Run! Run! Run!” We weren’t even part of this cult! What’s happening to us? Who are these people??? The tournament wasn’t even over when she turned to me and said, “I’m gonna play rugby too”…., and that my friends was the end of it.
A couple of months later, the 2017-2018 season started. We took her to the tryouts to see if she was really going to fully commit. Well, not only did she commit to practices twice a week which happens to be every Saturday at Jagorawi Golf and Country Club, (an hour away from Jakarta if I may add), but she made the team. That was late August 2017. A month later, we all flew to Bali to see her compete with her teammates at the Rugby Junior Bali Tournament against teams from the Asia-Pacific countries like Singapore. Well, what do you know? The Jakarta Komodos Jr. Under 10’s won the cup! First tournament! First cup! First win! The look on her face!
Then…it hit me. It’s true when they say some people, “can’t see past the end of their nose” because it wasn’t until that tournament that I truly saw what Sofía visualized about rugby the first time she got exposed to it. It wasn’t only about playing rugby, it was far more than that. It was about the fun she knew she would have, the friendships she knew she would make, the confidence it would give her, the participation she would have, her being part of a club, a community of people, the sportsmanship skills she would learn, en fin, for the thrill of it all. She saw all these things before I realized them for myself.
It’s official. Rugby has become part of our lives. I’m that overly proud parent, looking at her child getting on the pitch, the annoyingly crazy mom screaming on the sidelines, “Support, support! Tackle…tackle”, Run, Sofía run!” Now, the 2018-2019 season will start soon. She has gotten so great at the sport that this year she will start with the Under 12’s at the tender age of 10. The new season will definitely bring new excitement, new challenges, more competitions and more trophies to collect, (let’s go Komodos!). We surely can’t wait to do it all over again, and we couldn’t be happier for her.
WHO KNEW!
To learn more about the Jakarta Komodos Jr. Rugby Program, please click here. To learn more about how to become an official sponsor for the Jakarta Komodos Rugby Football Club, click here. And remember…
ON SATURDAYS, WE PLAY RUGBY!
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