Summer take-over is a very busy period at SANAE IV. Towards the end, when most of the crucial work has been completed, the base prepares for the take-over function, during which the new team formally takes over the responsibilities of the base from the old team. It is a cause for much celebration, especially for the old team, as it marks the official end of their tour down South.
To reward ourselves for a summer of hard work, the base personnel engage in some friendly rivalry with a series of competitive sport matches collectively called ‘The Take-over Games’.
There are several sports in which to take part, both as a team and individually. The team sports are ice-football and tug-o-war and the individual events are boot-throwing, darts, table-tennis and pool.
For our team, S51, the biggest event was undoubtedly the football. The Dozers had prepared a nice, flat playing surface for us in front of the base and the drivers had marked out a playing field complete with goals.
The rules were six-a-side and you had to play in your pampoenskoene, which believe me is much tougher than it looks! As luck would have it, we were up against S50 in our very first game. But we played very well and were able to come out on top.
The final we were up against Titan, having progressed due to our opposition not fielding a team in the semi-finals. It was a very tough match, which Titan managed to take right at the end 1-0. I must just add that we went into the finals as SERIOUS underdogs, and the spectators were even predicting scores in the double digits for Titan so we were actually quite pleased with our result.
The second team event was the tug-o-war. Our first and last face-off was against NDPW and we did not do so well. At least let us win 1 out of our three face-offs.
The Drivers completely dominated, taking out every team it went up against. Size definitely matters in this contest! In the final it was S50 against the drivers but even with a little outside interference from Wessie, they were still not able to come close to competing with the size and strength of the Drivers.
The final event was the boot-throw, in which yours truly took part. The objective is to throw a pampoenskoen over your head as far as you can. The girls and boys competed separately, with Stef, our cosmic-ray engineer, winning the title in the girl’s competition. While I did come close, there was no stopping Wessie from NDPW from taking the top spot.
The overall winners were:
- Biggest dribblers: Titan
- Biggest tuggers: Drivers
- Biggest strokers: Johan/Elrich & Sasi
- Biggest tossers: Lood/Gavin & Wessie
- Biggest swinger: Johan
- Biggest flinger: Wessie / Stef
And yeah, that was supposed to sound dirty…