Moms, dads and guardians of girls: Listen up! Your daughter has every chance of success in a world which is starting to open up for them when there was always injustice against the girl child. #SliceofGasant columnist Gasant Abarder explains why his middle daughter is his greatest inspiration.
My 11-year-old daughter Misha Abarder is perhaps the most determined child I know. I may be biased, and she may not be the most talented girl footballer in her team, and she knows it. But she has already been on a journey and has come through the other side when most adults would’ve folded.
Misha is finally playing in a competitive all-girls league in an under-14 age division at her team Salt River Blackpool Football Club and under-13 for her school Golden Grove Primary. This follows eight years of playing with and against boys – which has made her stronger for it.
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She has now been selected for Western Province’s Schools Metro Central girls’ side and has the chance to tour either Dubai or Malaysia for tournaments at the end of the year (the organisers are still deciding the destination).
Come hell or high water, with my overdrawn bank account, Misha will be on that aircraft because she deserves it. I will scratch and claw my way to getting the substantial funds needed for the trip.
I’ve watched her grow over the last eight years, from joining Soccer Starz at pre-school to being dumped in a heap in a robust tackle by a boy too many times. I’ve seen coaches ignoring her during training and referring to only the boys. She and her girl teammates had to endure boys her age ridiculing them as they arrived for a fixture.
She has taken both the physical and psychological pain and stood up and did it again because she loves this game. Misha, who wants to be a lawyer one day, is the captain of her two sides that are punching above their weight against older girls. The coaches who chose her for the role (I didn’t and protested despite now coaching both sides), did so because of her qualities as a vocal leader.
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In her school team, only Misha has played competitively before and yet they’ve notched up wins through sheer will. In her club side – which is really an u12 team – we have two wins out of three despite their opponents being larger and older.
Along the way, these girls are being taught life skills that will stay with them forever. But why must the path for girls on the football field, in the boardroom or life generally, be so much harder?
I have three daughters. The youngest is a spirited six-year-old Ariana who has started rhythmic gymnastics and the eldest is 15-year-old Kehara, who plays school hockey and wants to be a clinical psychologist. In our household, they know they can have these aspirations, despite what the world will tell them.
They also live in a world stacked against them. For every girl child, there is a parent with a heightened awareness of the danger that lurks outside. A South African woman has this heightened awareness when she walks alone across a field, a basement parking lot or even just going out for a morning run. The things boys and men take for granted.
There are lots of heroes along Misha’s journey. One of them is Bassier Ellis (brother of Banyana coach Desiree Ellis), who first told me of the community club where Misha now plays that was starting a girls’ soccer team. The chairperson Iqbal Kasker, of Salt River Blackpool Football Club, who can ill afford the space for more teams but fought for the girls despite fierce opposition.
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One of Misha’s heroes is senior women’s coach Shannon Mills, who won the Coke Cup as a player for UCT amongst other honours and is one of the leading minds in football. She has won Coach of the Year at Blackpool after doing the league title and knockout double with the youngest side in these competitions. Her colleague Ahmed Parker is one of the biggest advocates of the girls’ game.
Further afield, Anees Abbas – who comes from a dynasty of soccer legends of Salt River – has created the same space for girls at Camps Bay Football Club. No piece about girls’ junior football is complete without a mention of Harold Potz – a pioneer in this space.
Potz showed me a gesture during a match I had never witnessed before and will never forget. His girls’ team was dominating our side a few seasons ago in a friendly and he asked his girls to back off and allow Blackpool the space to play. That is what the tight-knit world of girls’ soccer is all about despite the lack of support from SAFA.
That we’ve had Banyana at the World Cup and crowned Afcon champs but don’t have junior girls’ soccer leagues from under 8 is an indictment of their shambolic leadership.
If I can have anything to do with it all, Misha will have a problem: A legal career or pro football. Or the best of both worlds. It is a great problem to have. Our daughters need to know they needn’t stand back for anyone.
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The answer to South Africa’s challenges lies in a small Eastern Cape town
Picture: Supplied