Monkton Student Wins 2023 Superball World Open Championships

A huge congratulations to Monkton Senior School student Isabel for winning the 2023 Superball World Open Championships! Her dedication and exceptional talent has been globally recognised after competing in this year's World Freestyle Football Association event held in Prague, Czech Republic. Isabel shares her journey to Suberball victory with us here:

"Superball is the biggest open freestyle football event, held each year in Prague for one week in August. It is a World Championships and this year there were a record breaking number of female participants (39) and overall participants with 429 people competing from 52 different countries. Tuesday was the qualification day for the females, where there were 10 groups with 3/4 females in each group.

For the first battle, I was in a group with 3 other freestylers who were from Japan, Columbia and France. I ended up coming 1st in my group getting 23/30 points meaning I ranked joint 4th overall after everyone had competed. Thursday was when the top 32 competed, which was a big moment in female freestyle as there has never been enough females to make this happen! Here I faced the 28th seed, Kaelen from America, who I managed to beat 3-0. This meant that I was qualified for Friday's finals where I would face Sera from Germany in the top 16. I managed to win this battle 5-0, but wasn’t pleased with my performance as I dropped the ball a lot more than expected. I had to change for the next round and be at my best as I was now facing the best freestylers in the world.

I then faced Miharu from Japan in top 8, who came 4th in Red Bull Street Style last year (which is the second biggest world freestyle competition) so I knew it was going to be a tough battle, but was confident that I could win especially if I managed to pull off the new tricks I had kept a secret! We both had a very strong first couple of rounds, where I managed to pull off my hardest trick that I had kept a secret which everyone seemed to enjoy, even managing to shock quite a few people. I finished strong with my final round which made Miharu shaky and meant she dropped the ball a lot of times and I was able to beat her 5-0.

Next up I was in the semi-final against Aguska from Poland, who is the 4x World Champion and 2x European Champion. This was going to be my toughest challenge yet, but I knew I could do it if I pulled off my hardest tricks/combos and showed some other new tricks I had saved. Both of our first rounds were solid with only a few drops meaning the battle was pretty level. I then pulled off all of my hardest tricks in the last round without any drops. Aguska then had another solid round but I ended up winning 5-0. This was my hardest challenge yet and would be the hardest opponent to face in the whole competition, so now I knew I needed to focus as I felt it was in my hands to win. However, this then meant I was into the final against Caitlyn from the USA who was the Red Bull Street Style Champion from last year so again wasn’t going to be an easy battle...

I got off to a perfect first round, putting me slightly in the lead as Caitlyn had two drops and thankfully I didn’t drop the ball in this round. It was then Caitlyn’s second round, where she tried to pull off new hard tricks however she wasn’t able to do this and had a lot of drops.

It was then time for my second round, where I had planned to make it short and powerful as the drops had cost Caitlyn, however this didn’t go to plan as my legs were very tired so I wasn’t able to pull of my hardest lower trick. After two attempts I then switched it up and had a good end of my round, it was soon fairly even with us both going into our final rounds of the tournament. Caitlyn had a very good last round and it was now time for my final round. I managed to pull off a new combo and then finish my round with no drops. I wasn’t able to pull off my hardest moves, but ultimately the drops had cost Caitlyn."

"I ended up winning the Superball World Open Championships 2023 with a 3-2 victory in the final and making history as I was the youngest World Champion at just 15 years old!"

More information and a press release from the WFFA can be found here.