Sport in South Africa

One thing I’ve learned is that almost all South Africans are crazy about sports, even more so than many Americans, believe it or not. I was told this before coming here and I’ve definitely seen that it’s true. This was definitely a good culture to bring the World Cup into.

The most popular sports here are rugby, cricket, and soccer. Some other favorite sports are netball (which is kind of like basketball), tennis, field hockey, and track and field (which they call “athletics”). Like the U.S., South Africa has professional teams for its biggest sports based out of every large city. This time of year is the height of rugby season so I’ve become very familiar with the provincial rugby teams since everyone talks about them and my host family watches rugby on TV a lot. For example, Cape Town’s team is called the Stormers, Pretoria’s is the Blue Bulls, and Johannesburg’s in the Lions. The women I live with all grew up in Pretoria so they support the Blue Bulls, although they live in Cape Town now. People have all sorts of opinions about each other based on the teams they root for, very much like the U.S. Watching rugby with my host family and listening to people talk about rugby reminds me a lot of the way people act about college or pro football in the U.S.

Unlike the U.S., South Africa assembles nation-wide teams for rugby, soccer, cricket, and netball every year to play against other countries. They also give names to their national teams. The national rugby team is the Springboks (this was the team featured in the movie Invictus). A springbok is a small antelope-like animal found throughout South Africa. The soccer team is called Bafana Bafana, which is why that name kept getting thrown around during the World Cup. “Bafana Bafana” means “the boys, the boys” in one of the native African languages. The national cricket and netball teams are both called the Proteas, which is also the name of the national flower. One of the subjects that students are taught in primary school is called Life Skills, which is kind of like social studies. In grades 1-3 they learn about things like good citizenship, careers, community helpers, and national symbols – not to different from lower elementary social studies in the U.S. They also learn about sports in school, which happened to be the Life Skills unit my Grade 3 class has been working on since I’ve been here. The kids have learned about the difference between team and individual sports, sports equipment, the roles of different people at a sporting event (players, spectators, referee, etc.), and also the names of South Africa’s national teams. From listening to these lessons I’ve learned a lot myself about South African sporting culture.

In the U.S. a lot of young kids start playing sports on community recreational teams and then move up to travel teams or middle school and high school teams. In South Africa, all primary schools have their own sports teams for Grade 2 and up. Poorer schools like the one I’m working at offer barely any arts programs, and only for the older grades, but they have rugby, cricket, netball, and track and field teams for all ages and compete against other nearby schools. Sports are a huge deal in the schools. I’ve gotten a small glimpse of this during my time at the school because my mentor teacher is the coach of the Grade 3 boys’ rugby team. Four boys from her class are on the team and the rest come from the other three Grade 3 classes. They practice every Monday and Tuesday afternoon after school and they all get so excited for it. They played their first game last week against the Grade 2 team (since the other schools they’re supposed to play against keep canceling the games). The Grade 3 team won, mostly because they’re bigger and have practiced more, but all of the kids were so excited just to get a chance to play. The gym teacher, who was the referee, wanted to play the game before the school day ended, so for the last hour of the day my mentor teacher and I trooped her whole class out to watch the game. Since she was on the field coaching, it was my job to keep the young spectators under control. (Which was quite the task.) They were almost as excited as they players. I had a lot of fun that day.

Grades 2 and 3 playing rugby

Our group leaders from MSU have made sure we’ve been treated to some South African sports experiences as well. A couple weeks ago they took us to an indoor sports center to play action cricket. They split our group into four teams and paired up the teams to play against each other. Contrary to popular belief, cricket is actually very different from baseball and it took a while to get the hang of at first. Thankfully we had Corvell, his brother-in-law Johnny, his sons Dayle and Dominic, and his nephew Jesse playing with us to help us out. Even so, I was pretty confused for a long time. I didn’t finally get it down until almost the end of the game and then it was time to leave. Oh well.

Indoor cricket

Last Friday we got tickets to see Cape Town’s “minor league” rugby team, called simply Western Province, play a game. The games for the minor teams don’t fill up that much so we were able to get really good seats close to the field. I still don’t really know much about rugby, but surprisingly I was able to follow along pretty well. It’s enough like football that it kind of made sense. I’m amazed that the players don’t hurt themselves more often since they don’t wear padding and helmets like football players. Apart from Spartan football I’ve never paid much attention to sports back home, but I’ve actually found learning about the sports in South Africa to be very interesting. I’m glad I was able to experience a little bit of this part of their culture.