Ladies football club offers ’Onnabelievable’ fitne
2006-03-08
Onnabelievable Ladies Football Club
Why should a woman fret the feign choice of fitness regimes over fun with friends? Whether you're a former all-American military soccer player or first-timer, Onnabelievable Ladies Football Club proves you can have both at Jingu Futsal Courts, and in Queens Cup Tournaments, ALT tournaments and other competitions.
On Wednesday nights, up to a dozen or so members can be found practicing beats, breaks and breakways at Jingu Futsal Courts in Tokyo's Shinanomachi. With about two six-aside or eight-aside competitive matches a month, they take their training seriously. But for these mostly ex-pat players team camaraderie is top priority.
"We're quite a sociable bunch," says team captain Helen Daly, a 30-year-old English teacher from Britain. She adds that on nights when practice is rained out even more of the clubs 20 or so members show at their favorite after-training izakaya. "We often go out for karaoke."
Like the name - a play on "onna" (Japanese for woman) and "unbelievable" - the club is the brainchild of Kate Smurthwaite, an avid football fan who returned to England in 2003. The seed she planted six years ago has taken root and blossomed into a veritable institution sporting year-round training, matches against Japanese and other ex-pat women's teams and group trips and socials. It's come a long way since its humble beginnings as, "just a couple of girls playing in the park," Daly says. The draw is as much the team as it is the sport.
Carla Billington, 24, is a teacher who says she was board and lived far from Tokyo when she first heard of Onnabelievable: "I needed to make friends so I said, 層ow, this sounds cool.' I'll be leaving Japan in June and this is one of the things I'll miss the most - not just the practices but the friends. We go out together and do ski trips. It's just a fun thing."
Onnabelievable Ladies Football Club
On one Wednesday night, coach Amanda Handley, 24, drills pairs working a breakaway, pass-and-shoot routine. The elementary school teacher's words are as encouraging as they are instructive. She jokes that she's not really a coach: "They like to call me that; I just run the training sessions." It's no wonder. She clearly knows football.
"I absolutely adore football," says Handley, adding she played competitive footsall in Canada before coming to Japan. "I've been playing since I was 4 years old." After a couple of Onnabelievable training sessions she says she was hooked: "I fell in love with the girls. I've been coming ever since."
All that practice appears to payoff. The club won most of its games in the Nagano and Tochigi ALT tournaments and did a fair job of holding its own in two Queens Cup tournaments, according to 2005 results posted on its Web site. It also competes in Pretty Women's Cup and Pretty League tournaments.
"We've won tournaments," Daly says. "We tend to do reasonably well and usually get to finals or semifinals. I'm very surprised by the high standard of football in Japan - but we usually hold our own." Like Handley, however, she stresses that Onnabelievable welcomes players of any skill level: "We have complete beginners who have never touched a ball before and we have one girl that was on an all-American military team."
Handley says that the teammates that enter different competitions, "depend on the dynamics of the game we field," but adds there's a higher priority than placing top players in big matches. "There's a really strong social element to the team," she adds. "We don't want to sacrifice that"
To learn more about Onnabelievable Ladies Football Club and how to join the fun check out: http://www.onnabelievable.com/.
