{"id":234548,"date":"2022-08-18T22:36:38","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T20:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/?p=119954"},"modified":"2022-08-18T22:36:38","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T20:36:38","slug":"from-varsity-football-ball-boy-to-varsity-football-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/from-varsity-football-ball-boy-to-varsity-football-star\/","title":{"rendered":"From Varsity Football ball boy to Varsity Football star"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1 \">\n<aside id=\"republication_tracker_tool-2\" class=\"republication_tracker_tool clearfix\">\n<h5 class=\"adtitle\">Republish for Free<\/h5>\n<div class=\"license\">\n<p><button name=\"Republish This Story\" id=\"cc-btn\" class=\"republication-tracker-tool-button\">Republish This Story<\/button><\/p>\n<p><a class=\"license\" rel=\"noreferrer license noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" class=\"lazyload\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/from-varsity-football-ball-boy-to-varsity-football-star.png\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/from-varsity-football-ball-boy-to-varsity-football-star.png\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"message\">\n<p>Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/aside>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/?attachment_id=119955\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt width=\"300\" height=\"184\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-119955 size-thumbnail lazyload\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/from-varsity-football-ball-boy-to-varsity-football-star.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-119955 size-thumbnail\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/from-varsity-football-ball-boy-to-varsity-football-star.jpg\" alt width=\"300\" height=\"184\">Wesley Sneijder, Fabio Cannavaro, Carlos Tevez, Raul Gonzalez and Mateo Kovacic are among some of the world\u2019s best football players, yet they have one thing in common \u2013 before dazzling with their skills in the biggest football stadiums around the world, they all started as ball boys.<\/p>\n<p>Omphile Shuping, one of the 2022 Varsity Sports NWU players, also started to participate in Varsity Football as a ball boy for the NWU team back in 2013 during the inaugural Varsity Football tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Shuping, affectionately known as \u2018The General\u2019, joined the NWU Soccer Institute in 2020 but only started playing Varsity Football in the 2021 edition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to be part of the NWU Soccer Institute team after being a Varsity football ball boy in 2013,\u201d he told Varsity Football.<\/p>\n<p>His football passion started when he was a little kid, playing in the streets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI started playing for a team Named Magra, aged 11 until I was 14 years. Then moved to another in my home area known as Debunkers for a year. Afterwards, I went on to play for Mafikeng Rocks, where I grew both as a player and a person. I learned a lot about life and soccer in the 6 years I spent there,\u201d said Shuping.<\/p>\n<p>Despite playing as left-back due to two NWU left-backs being sidelined with injuries, Shuping has already scored two goals for the NWU Eagles so far in the 2022 Varsity Football tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The ball boy-turned-star says the spirit is very high in the team in preparation for their next game against the 2021 Varsity Football champions from the University of Johannesburg.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe upcoming game against UJ is crucial. Having bounced back by winning our last home game against UKZN from a setback loss in the game prior, we must sustain the momentum and take the challenge to our opponents at our scheduled next meeting. It won\u2019t be easy, but with the support of the NWU Purple Army and the plan communicated by our coach, I am confident that we will prevail\u201d, Shuping concluded.<\/p>\n<p>His goals have helped NWU to climb to the top of the log after collecting three wins from four games. The log leaders, however, will be tested this week as travel to the UJ Stadium to face the Orange Army at 18:30 on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mypr.co.za\/contact\/featured\/\">CLICK HERE to submit your press release to MyPR.co.za<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <span class=\"post-views-icon dashicons dashicons-chart-bar\"><\/span> <span class=\"post-views-label\">Press Release Views since 1 July 2022:<\/span> <span class=\"post-views-count\">92<\/span> <\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-pagination pagination\">Pages: <span class=\"post-page-numbers current\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Page <\/span>1<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\/from-varsity-football-ball-boy-to-varsity-football-star\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Page <\/span>2<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mypr.co.za\">Source: MyPR.co.za<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Republish for Free Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Wesley Sneijder, Fabio Cannavaro, Carlos Tevez, Raul Gonzalez and Mateo Kovacic are among some of the world\u2019s best football players, yet they have one thing in common \u2013 before dazzling with their skills in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":234549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9021,1],"tags":[3257],"class_list":{"0":"post-234548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mypr","8":"category-south-africa","9":"tag-mypr","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/from-varsity-football-ball-boy-to-varsity-football-star.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}