Last week saw a team of 28 athletes travel to Nairobi for the tenth International Schools of Southern and Eastern Africa (ISSEA) Soccer and Volleyball Championships. The teams arrived safely to a cool International School of Kenya and were met by their hosts for the next 3 days. Thursday saw a lively opening ceremony followed by a hard day of competition. The volleyball teams got off to a slow start failing to win a game in the morning session. The soccer teams fared better recording a couple of draws each. Friday morning saw the boys volleyball and girls soccer record their first wins of the competition with convincing displays against the International Community School from Ethiopia and Kenya respectively.  The afternoon got even better with the boys soccer recording a win and a draw. After the round robin tournament IST were placed fourth in girls soccer, fifth in boys volleyball and soccer and 6th in girls volleyball.

Saturday came with everything still to play for in the knockout stages. Unfortunately three teams failed to qualify past the quarter finals despite playing some of their best games of the tournament. The boys soccer played a convincing quarter final game beating Johannesburg by a goal and qualifying for the semi finals. The semi saw them narrowly lose 2-1 to Uganda after having a goal mysteriously disallowed. This defeat left the Twigas with a third place playoff game with the hosts Kenya. The boys played well but were unable to take advantage of some well worked chances and eventually went down 1-0 finishing fourth.

Although there were no trophies this year, the tournament saw new friendships forged and a wealth of experience gained by the relatively young IST teams. Four players were selected by the coaches to represent IST in the All Tournament Teams. Sophie Landon and Josephine Smit for girls soccer and volleyball and Malek Jaber and Andrew Thomas for boys soccer and volleyball.

Congratulations to all the players selected to represent IST and a huge thank you to the coaches; Jarrod Dale, Stephen Fogliano, Sue Turner and Jennifer Kremer for spending endless hours preparing the teams for the Championships. 

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