written by Hannah Adrienne Palang
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. I was never really into sports because I could never shoot a ball into a hoop, or serve a volleyball so well that it would always fly over the net. But early this year, during one of my physical education (PE) classes, a group from the Philippine Floorball Association (PFA) introduced me and my classmates to the sport of floorball. This was a newly introduced sport to us, so I was curious. Mrs. Madrona, our PE teacher, let us play the sport during our PE time every other week. When the school year ended, I decided to take up the summer workshop along with my brother, even though the schedule was hard to manage because a lot of other sports clinics would use the gym. And so began my first summer, where I walked out of my comfort zone, made new great friends, and fell in love with floorball.
The summer workshop was conducted on 7:00-8:00 in the morning during Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, because the volleyball sports clinic would take over after 8:00am. We would extend our playing time on Tuesdays and Thursdays since nobody else would use the gym after 8:00 am. We usually start by jogging and doing warm-ups, then we do drills to develop our dribbling, passing and shooting skills. After the drills, we were divided into teams so we would play and apply our developed skills during the games. At first it was tiring, but then I was able to make new friends and it made playing the sport much more enjoyable. After a while, CDU students came along and they took the workshop with us, and even gave us tips on playing.
On May 30 (which was the last day), we started with an orientation by Jacob Nguyen, the national floorball team consultant, about the history of floorball and its growth here in the Philippines. After that, we had a short break while Coach Jacob and Coach Rigor Alamar divided the class into six teams to be led by one of the coaches, Vern, Cheo, Darwin, Chris and Stewart respectively. The teams got narrowed down to four, and eventually two teams played against each other. Goal after the goal, the game finally ended, and so did the day. The most valuable player award went to Mac, for scoring the most goals aside from the coaches. We took pictures to remember the day and went home our separate ways, tired, but happy for the experience.
When you never try something new, you’ll never know what you’ll be missing out on. I thought I’d never be able to love or be good at any kind of sport, but floorball made me change my mind about sports in general. Even though it’s strenuous at times, I find myself having fun, especially when you’re playing with people you get along with. I hope that floorball will continue to flourish not only here in Cebu, but also in the whole country. Lastly, I hope that other people like the old me (before floorball) will find love in the sport like I did.
edited by Dan Abrogueña for floorball.ph
