By Trudeau Gulati
While the actual FIFA World Cup continues into its final weekend, the PDHS World Cup has ended with a final match that drew an excited and enthusiastic crowd on Tuesday, December 13th, with the two teams in the final, England and Japan. While the actual World Cup in Qatar has controversies, including penalty kicks out of nowhere and accusations of referee bias, the PDHS World Cup mostly avoided controversy. Students were pleased to be back playing intramural sports and having fun on their lunch breaks.
Photo credits: Mya Virk
The World Cup is a celebration of the world’s best players in the global soccer world, playing one of the most beloved games on the planet. While not everyone enjoys the ‘beautiful game’, and the actual game seems to be mired in controversy. The world’s attention was ready to be diverted and distracted from the last few years of trouble that the world’s population has been experiencing. The idea to create a school World Cup was to bring out our school spirit and community, whether one loved the game or not.
The audience loudly cheered for both teams in the final match between England and Japan. It split on the controversial decision not to allow a substitute player from an alternate team. The issue was quickly resolved, and the game was played. The English team tried hard to keep the match even, but Japan scored the first goal within the first ten minutes. The problems for England kept coming, and eventually, the score was 3-0 when the buzzer rang.
What About Intramural Sports at Lunch Hours?
The idea to bring about the World Cup was intended to bring about school spirit. The work and effort required to get the games going weren’t without challenges, but it has taught the student council a great deal about running these kinds of events. Joel Ainslie, a grade 12 student, suggests that changes could be made by “making group stages” and adds that it would be good to “have qualifying games to rank the teams for the official tournament bracket.” Suggestions and improvements will help make intramurals possible in the future. Carson Burr agrees, suggests that intramurals should become the norm, and thinks, “we should have a spikeball tournament.”
If the student body is interested, we should try and make indoor basketball and intramural hockey sports in the coming months. What do you think? We need your input, so please attend student council meetings, and let us know. We can make our winter more exciting and eventful if we put in the effort.
T-shirt prizes have been created for the winning two teams and our volunteers.
We congratulate all the winners on Team Japan Carter Draillard, Dion Lamallari, Ethan Lewis, Emerson Noseworthy, Cale North, Joel Ainslie, and Nathan Halliday. Congratulations to England runners-up, including Adam Shipp, Daniel Kovaks, Finn Read, Adam Kozbor, Owen Lalonde, Kruz Korslick, and Coach Noah Seymour. We also want to acknowledge the refs and volunteers who made this event happen, Mrs. Halliday, Mr. Merrick, Ms. Johnson, Shaaf Shoaib, Nathan D’Cunha, Emre Oner, Armaan Mangat, Analisa Chattergoon, Tefik Murphy, Balraj Johal, Judy Abu-mandil, Alice Hubert and Trudeau Gulati.