UNITEN Floorball in Intervarsity 2016

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Kuala Lumpur,14 November-In the balmy morning of Sunday, inside a UNITEN bus heading to the University Malaya was a group of people, clamoring inside their heart, the yearning and desire for glory and honor to prove they have what it takes to be Champions. Their eyes sparkled with hope and their heart filled with fire. Hungry for a chance to play  like a beast waiting to be release. They were the representative for UNITEN\’s Floorball Club. They were the Storm, the Thunder and the Venom of UNITEN.

Floorball is a new type of sports which was officially established in Sweden in the late 1980\’s by Sweden, Finland and Switzerland. It is a type of floor hockey where there are 5 players including for outfielder and one goalkeeper. It is different to hockey  that it has a smaller court size, hockey stick made out of plastic and a bit of wood and a hollow plastic ball. Other than that, there are also no outs, this means, a match will go on uninterrupted. Moreover, the courts size makes the player\’s dribbling skills ever more paramount as the space for them to run into, in order to pass defenders are limited. All of these combination makes Floorball one of the fastest pace and physically challenging game.

The game usually lasted for 60 minutes with  3 halves. However, for this tournament, Intervarsity UM Open 2016 held in Sport Centre University Malaya, there will only be one half that will last for 18 minutes straight. There were 12 teams competing for the males category, while only 7 for the female category. The favorite for the males category were the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), German-Institute of Technology (GMI) and also UNIKL while for the female were University Malaya (UM) and USM.

Unlike those teams mentioned above,the UNITEN teams which are UNITEN Thunder and Storm (male teams) and UNITEN Venom (Female team) were not the favorite and were considered the underdog since there were the new team on the block; UNITEN Storm and Venom having around 1 to 2 years of experience in Floorball while for UNITEN thunder, this tournament will be their first. The stage was set and it was like the tale of David and Goliath. UNITEN with only passion and faith on their side. They fight on. The first  two games saw Storm able to clinch a comfortable victory in both matches while Venom and Thunder seems a bit struggling to find form. Regardless, they continue giving their best in every match.  Stacking under all of those odds, the UNITEN did comparatively well in the tournament with UNITEN Venom, Storm and Thunder were able to win third place, Quarter-final finish and 4th place in the group stage respectively.

The coach, Faiz Shaffiai when ask by Nadi on the overall development of Floorball in UNITEN, the coach replied proudly, \”The development in UNITEN is extremely good because as I saw UNITEN Storm in the previous game was able to win their first two matches, even though (due to time constraint) was only able to train for only a few months prior to the tournament, they are performing well. I saw there are improvement in every match they played,\”.

The player were a bit disappointed of the results as they feel they can do better but was compensated by the fact that they current achievement will only get better and better till finally, one day, maybe in the no so distance future, they will bring glory. Glory that will make, UNITENIANs, their parents and themselves proud.

Nadi would like to end our article with the answer given by the coach when we ask the essential attitude needed to become one of the great in Floorball, \”They must be passionate and those who are playing Floorball must have passion in the court when they are playing\”. Passion is the key, in due time glory will come.

 

 \”CONGRATULATIONS FLOORBALL UNITEN AND GOODLUCK NEXT YEAR\”

 

 

 

Written by: Akmal Aziq bin Baharin