1×6 is 6, 2×6 is 12, 3×6 is 18, 4×6 is 24, 5×6 is 30, 6×6 is 36, 7×6 is 4…
As your eyes search for the nearest person mouthing the answer, the teacher screams, “Lie down.” We would smartly lay down and receive our morning share of punishment for not practicing and learning the multiplication tables. The recitation of the multiplication table was routine, and at times the teacher would go by column, row, or worst to best-performing students, picking out the unfortunate souls that didn’t know the answers. Holding our ‘Musana’ exercise books, which had a full multiplication table at the back, we would recite each, column by column, in preparation for the lesson. It would be disingenuous to say that we were learning, just merely cramming. If you asked someone what the product of 12 and 10 was while they mindlessly recited the tables of 4, there’s a chance they would run into a sheer panic because it deviates from how they have crammed.
The festive season is here, and May yours be filled with peace, joy, love, and happiness. The festive season is when we expect the banquets to be filled with pleasantries, all kinds of meals and drinks. It so happens that we have been battling with COVID – 19 for the better part of the year. A good number of activities came to a halt, sports inclusive. Even the dire efforts to jog were curtailed at some point due to government regulations. But here comes the new year, 2021, leagues resume soon. 2 months to league resumption may seem a lot, but as any competitive athlete would know, this is a short time for recovery. Unfortunately, sports is not like the multiplication tables that children can easily cram. Sports is a skill itself and needs to be mastered and practiced for as long as you are playing competitively. For a more significant part of 2020, a good number of us couldn’t afford to train or workout at that because of the situation at hand.
Every time we would break off for holidays, some people’s sports life would temporarily pause for the 3 or 4 weeks we would be home due to reasons like extra lessons at home, or sheltered children that couldn’t leave home because of the parental edict, or because they lived a reasonable distance away from 5sports facilities. When school came around, the Coach would, during training, make us run up and down the Great Trek (a steep road at Namagunga, named after the Great Trek of the Boers in South Africa). With this workout, the people that had not been training for one reason or the other would be easily fished out, as complaints of fatigue and muscle pains and strains are aired. It took almost 2 or 3 weeks for someone to recover and gain their fitness once again. But that time could have been used to work on your plays and basic drills.
Towards the festive season, I had the opportunity of training with the Makerere University Women’s basketball team, the Sparks. The nature of comments when the season comes around ranged from jubilation since they had not gotten to play the 2020 season hence excited for the 2021 season, and had enough time to rest but it was inevitable not to worry about the ‘rusting’ that was bound to happen, either due to overconsumption of food or general complacency.
Nevertheless, a continuous workout regiment and a generally healthy lifestyle are ideal to prepare one for the incoming team training next year. It’s not too late to incorporate a fitness plan of daily jogs, no equipment workouts, and a healthy diet. Sports is not a textbook activity that can be crammed over a while and then inevitably forgotten once its use has passed; instead, it is a skill acquired over time with consistency, discipline, and hard work. As the old adage goes, “Practice makes perfect.” So keep practicing, and fears of ‘rusting’ will fade away.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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