Christy Chow
On Tuesday, April 18th, Dalat’s women’s varsity soccer team met at 3:30am to begin their journey to Manila for the ACSC soccer tournament. The sixteen exhausted girls headed to Penang International Airport in two vans, accompanied by Coach Frohlich, Coach Munson, and chaperone/parent Aunty Claudia.
Upon arrival in KLIA, the girls immediately boarded their next flight to Manila. This flight took much longer, but the team entertained themselves by watching movies from the countless selection Malaysian Airlines offered.
The plane eventually touched down at noon and the girls piled out of the gate into the long immigration lines. During their wait, Daniela Rana (11) kept the girls in good spirits by telling a story about her windowless seat on the airplane.
Unfortunately, after the long wait, not all the girls passed through immigration safely. The immigration officers detained three of the youngest members of the team traveling without a parent present. The officers took them into a back room, along with Coach Frohlich. Dael Kim (9), one of the detained members of the team, described the experience as, “We didn’t do much. All we had to do was write our names and birthdate, pay money, and wait for a long time.”
Meanwhile, the rest of the team settled down on the airport floor, only to discover that Aunty Claudia’s checked-in bag had not made it to Manila with them. After some communication, the adults decided the whole team would wait a couple hours for the bag to arrive and for the three young girls to be released. Thankfully, along with this news, host Faith Academy sent a couple boxes of pizza to the airport to appease the waiting members of the team.
After two long hours, the remaining members of the team came out of the room safely and joined in the feasting. But even after another long hour of waiting, the team of women discovered that Aunty Claudia’s bag had not made it on the next flight over and would only be set to arrive that night.
Upon hearing this news, the team picked up their bags and left the airport, instantly feeling the heat of Manila consume them. They trudged to the two vans waiting, piled in, and fell asleep, tired from the early start to their adventure. After a grueling two hours in traffic, the team arrived at their final destination, YunJyo Lyso Ministry Center, five hours after they had arrived in Manila.
The team plopped their bags down into the living room/hall set up with mats, blankets, and pillows, finally able to rest after a long day of traveling. The adventure, however, had only just begun for the Dalat Eagles. This team of nineteen women would spend their next five days laughing with each other, serving others, and fighting towards a goal they had set at the beginning of their season.
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