Jess Sanders trip to Bahrain
Below is Jess's diary and images from her trip to Bahrain.
 |
When we joined the talented youth umpiring programme
we didn't expect to be asked to umpire the Inter Gulf competition
held in Bahrain, and we were asked, we were all so excited! The Inter
Gulf competition consists of 21 women's teams and 4 men's teams. The
women's teams are split into 3 pools, and initially play matches in
a round-robin format to determine ranking within each pool. The men
will play round-robin in a single pool. Day 2 of the tournament will
involve knockout matches for the Inter-Gulf Cup, Plate, Bowl, and
Men's titles. Seven of the top teams from the 2008 tournament will
also play in a separate competition, called the Invitational Cup.
They will once again play Hucclecote Netball Club from Gloucestershire,
England. |
| Wednesday - we finally got here after almost
24 hours travelling! We arrived at the hotel at about 9.30pm their
time (three hours ahead) and had our first glimpse of the hotel, It
was amazing! After having our bags carried to our rooms, we went straight
to the Irish Bar at the back of the hotel to grab some grub, then
had a pretty early night!
|
 |
 |
Thursday - Today we got to see a bit of the country
as the tournament doesn't start until Friday. We went to the local
market, and I think we all agreed that we had great fun bartering!
We got back to the hotel around midday and went straight to the pool,
where we relaxed and soaked up the sun for a bit! The evening soon
came, and we were invited to a champagne reception where we met all
the players and got our T- Shirts. There was a lot of press there
wanting to take photos of us and we all said that we felt like celebrities!
We had our briefing on the rules of the tournament. After this we
had just enough time to hit the spa for the first time, it was incredible!
It is now obvious that for most of us this is the only chance off
staying in a 5* hotel and we were definitely going to make the most
of it! |
| Friday - The tournament starts today and we were
up at 6am packing for the day ahead and meeting for breakfast. Before
we knew it we were on the bus by 8. The minute we got to the rugby
club the heat hit us (and it was only about 8.30!) We had been given
our schedules already and we all had ten matches to umpire, (two halves
of 7 minutes) the first match started at 9.30am and after the players
briefing, the music started blaring out and the players were getting
pumped up, the umpires were very excited too! It was brilliant that
Karen and Lorraine the two mentors who came with us, had planned what
court and who they were mentoring before hand. On most of the games
we had one of the two mentoring us. The midday heat soon hit us and
we were lucky that there was a nice breeze about. The highlight of
the day for me was turning up to umpire on a court and seeing two
men's teams warming up, it didn't take long for me to realise that
I was umpiring two men's teams! The game was so funny to umpire as
they weren't really taking much notice of the umpire (or as they were
saying "REF!") The crowd were cheering away, the atmosphere
was incredible! The day went too quick and we were soon back in our
hotel getting ready for the party that was held on the top floor of
the hotel. The night was brilliant, we all had so much fun and the
teams were all very welcoming and friendly. The food was to die for,
and they had margaritas on tap…. |
 |
 |
Saturday - the second day of the tournament and
as it was a "knock out" with the "golden goal"
rule (the whistle goes on the team with the ball gets a free pass
and the next team to score a goal wins) luckily I didn't have this
but two of the other TYUP's did and there game looked very exciting!
In the afternoon the finals all took place and most of us were allocated
a final to do. I got given the invitational cup final which was Hucclecote's
regional 1 team against Abu Dhabi, this was a very fast game and the
crowd were roaring; the atmosphere was brilliant! At the end of the
tournament we all went swimming in the rugby club's pool and had a
few drinks then headed back to a little restaurant by our hotel for
the second time. After we had eaten we went for our second spa and
were all so relaxed! We then decided to go and sit by the hotel pool
for a bit as it was our last night there.
|
|
Sunday - we could have had a lie in today but instead we
decided to get up and go for yet another spa before we set off on
our travels home.
This whole experience is something that we all said "we will
never forget" and it has been truly a life changing experience.
Thank you to everyone for all the support we've all had!
|
 |
Use
our webshop to help us raise money.
  
Exciting news! We are now registered with www.buy.at, which
is an online shopping website that pays us commission when we buy from any of
their online Retailers, including Play.com, M&M Direct, Amazon, Tesco,
Asda, M&S, Woolworths.co.uk, Thorntons, HMV, etc, you can access over
100 leading retailers using our webshop. Click on the image above or following
link to enter our own shopping page. Find our webshop at www.buy.at/NatWestNetballClub
(please bookmark this link for future use). Every time you use our webshop when
shopping online, you’ll automatically earn money for us! You don’t
pay anything extra by using our webshop, so please try to use it whenever
you can.
|
