Buckets and Back Aches (SAISA Basketball 2024)

This year SAISA girls basketball was hosted in Muscat Oman at The American International School of Muscat (TAISM). Our flight was very early in the morning on Wednesday which ment we basically had an all-nighter to get to Oman. Thankfully I slept through the 3 ½ hour flight to Muscat from Colombo.

This year, eight teams from the SAISA group participated; 

• The American International School of Muscat (TAISM)
• American Community School in Jordan (ACS)
• American International School of Chennai (AISC)
• American International School of Dhaka (AISD)
• American School of Bombay  (ASB)
• Karachi American School (KAS)
• Overseas School of Colombo (OSC)
• Lincoln School of Nepal (LS)

Our pool was with; LS, AISD and AISC, so for the first two days we had to play each of them to decide our placements for the playoffs. On our first day we started the day off with playing against AISD. We played them last year and lost pretty badly due to it being a very late game, so this year we were determined to redeem ourselves. Sadly we were unable to beat them but despite that we played so well as a team and worked very well together. The game ended very closely with only one point difference, 16-17. The second match of the day was against the defending champions from last year, LS. Our team was quite down from our last match just a few hours prior but we gave it our all. Sadly we walked out of the gym with another loss, the final score was 27-10. I was very unfortunate and in the last 5 seconds of the game I twisted my ankle on myself and was unable to walk on it properly. This injury was horrible and I had to rest it well to be able to perform at my best later on. 

The second day we had an early match against AISC, we had watched a few of their matches and were prepared with certain plays to do so I felt confident in the team walking into it. Not only that for us to go further in the competition it was crucial that we win this game. My ankle was still very sore and I slept bad so my back was very stiff, so I rested it and iced it for this match. Our team played so well and the final score was 25-16. After this, the pool games were finished; we ended up having a three way tie in our pool with AISD, AISC with all three of us having 2 losses and 1 win. Due to point differences we were able to be placed second in our pool! This meant we had to play ASB later that afternoon. Our game against ASB was so close, it was an amazing game to watch. The team came together and played so well. We actually were tied and went into a 3 minute overtime which a few of my teammates scored to give us an edge, the final score was 21-18. This ment we were into the semi finals!

Our last day all of us were nervous, we had our first game against the host school TASIM. This game was quite chaotic since we had to share the gym with all the supporters and their choices of instrumental; water bottle drums. My ankle was feeling a bit better today so I played a little in this game. The mix of the nervousness of not playing the day before and the home crowd noise did not help me at all. Our team tried our hardest and didn’t give up many shots due to our strength in defense, though sadly we lost, 23-12. After this game our team felt very defeated, we were really disappointed we did not have a shot for the finals for 1st and 2nd place. Which is why we went into our next game with a lot of hope. Our last game of the season was against ACS for 3rd and 4th place, medal or no medal. To say the least we wanted this badly. The game was very aggressive but we worked together to put up a good fight. Saldy ACS was able to get the edge over us and won 38-12. All of us were very disappointed, especially since this was the last SAISA basketball for a lot of us.

This experience has taught me a lot, even though we were unable to place in the top 3, I am so incredibly proud of our team and how far we have come and improved from the start of the short season. I will miss this SAISA more than ever and I’m so grateful I was able to experience it. 

Links:

• Results 
• Live Streams 
• SAISA Basketball 2024 Video
• Photos (each game