Two tiny drops of Black Mamba venom can kill a human in 30 minutes flat. Totalcampo’s spirit snake squad could only pray for such potency.

“We got off to a great start this season with a 10-1 win, but we quickly started to have personnel issues,” explains captain Nicole Penate, who points to the loss of forward Sabrina Benfares – she still leads her team with the five goals she collected in that opening win – as setting off a rather unfortunate rash of absences due to injury, summer vacations and lack of available babysitters.

Most of the Black Mambas have shared benches in various teams, divisions and mixed leagues across the island. Several have faced each other in past years and some, like Penate and teammate Stéphanie Piché, even played soccer together back in high school.

But the roster of mostly young thirty-something mothers have discovered that playing with no subs (and sometimes without a regular keeper) can be quite rough, even if the original goal in forming the team was largely to stay in shape and have fun. The Mambas currently hold the sixth and final playoff spot in the FC2 Division.

“Unfortunately, our lack of players means we’re not holding out much hope for our ranking or the playoffs. But we’re happy to show up and play regardless.”

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