Cricket in Adelaide

For the last three years, Ella has enjoyed playing cricket in a local girls competition designed to encourage participation and have fun. Aranda PS also takes part in a girls cricket gala day which this year was to be held the week we were at the snow. Luckily for Ella, there were only 2 northside schools wanting to take part and so the gala day was cancelled. The northside schools were invited to join in the southside gala day which was to be held the following week so Ella was happy once again. It was during this gala day that Cricket ACT spoke to the girls about the ACT Schools team and encouraged girls to nominate.

Ella was bubbling with excitement with the prospect of being in a team, however we (Andy and I) were reluctant to take this journey. We put the decision in the too difficult basket and got on with our busy lives. It seems though that wasn't what the stars had aligned for our family! The night before nominations closed and the final trial, one of Ella's teacher forwarded us the information and once again a very enthusiastic Ella broached the subject that evening. After much discussion the forms were submitted.

Ella attended the trials with about 25 other girls. There were a few familiar faces - one from her cricket team and another from band! Anyway they took the girls through various activities to help rank the girls according to their abilities. A few days later we received word that Ella had made the cut....we would be going to Adelaide in mid November!

Since then our Monday afternoons became crazy thanks to the extra cricket training requirements! We would leave home at 3.40 to get to cricket by 4pm. Katy and I would hang around while Ella trained til 5.30pm. From there we hightailed it over to band dropping Ella off before continuing on to Katy's 6.30pm gymnastic class. I stayed and watched Katy do gymnastic for an hour and then we'd drive back to pick up Ella and another school friend from band at 8pm. Eventually we'd get home just before 8.30pm!

We had this routine nailed down after a few weeks and would even wander over to buy some hot chips from the takeaway at Watson to eat between activities! Then Katy got promoted in her gymnastics class which meant a different and longer class! Thankfully it was on the same day beginning at 6pm and going for 1.5 hours. Thus we modified our route to go from cricket to drop Katy off, go onto band and drop Ella off before returning back to Katy and then back to Ella!! Luckily it was for only 5 weeks and we'd survived!