I think this year, due to COVID-19, the thing that I am most upset about being cancelled was SAISA. SAISA stands for South Asian International Schools Association, and it is our school’s sports competition league, where we compete in many different sports, including Basketball, Soccer, Volleyball, Swimming, Track and Field and Badminton. (There is also a SAISA Music, Math and Art, which I have done before, but was not planning on participating in this year). I have participated in at least one SAISA every year since Grade 6, and my SAISA trips were always my highlights for each year. Every year I have been dedicated to SAISA, trying out for as many teams as I could and always travelling if I made the team. This year (if there wasn’t COVID), I would have tried out for SAISA Volleyball, Basketball and Soccer (as you can only pick 3 per year). I was really disappointed that it was cancelled, as I was excited to develop my skills and I thought that each of our school’s teams had so much potential to do well.
SAISA Last Year:
So, since we couldn’t travel or even train for SAISA this year, the Athletic Directors of each school came together and organized a fun Virtual SAISA Challenge for us this year. Using the words of Mr. Turner, (our Athletic director) “the purpose is to promote the values of personal challenge, creativity, enjoyment, and inclusivity”. There were multiple challenges to complete for the sports Volleyball, Basketball and Soccer (Football). Every student was encouraged to try to submit as many videos as possible in attempt to complete all of the challenges.
For some context, here are a couple of examples of challenges:
Basketball (Each Challenge needs to be accompanied by video evidence)
Rules – Ball Handling: Each individual passes the ball once around each leg and around the waist (counts 1) how many can you do in 30 seconds?
Volleyball (Each Challenge needs to be accompanied by video evidence)
Passing in a row against a wall or passing in the air (passing with another person in the family or alone)
Challenge 1 Level 1-3: Any sequence. The highest number of consecutive passes wins.(maximum 1 minute) Pass with a family member, or alone against the wall. Proof – video footage
Football (Each Challenge needs to be accompanied by video evidence)
Rules: Wall Passes: stand 2 meters from the wall. Pass the ball against the wall using alternate feet. How many can you make in 1 minute? Proof – video footage
First, since I was the SGA Spirit Coordinator, Mr. Turner asked me to make a short video to publicize this event and to encourage people to participate and submit videos. So, I made this short video with little mini snippets of Me, my brother, my friends, and other school mates to try to get people inspired and encouraged to start submitting their videos.
I found making this video quite challenging, as it took me a long time and I had so many edits of it before I made the final version. At first, I made this video utilizing the short clips of trick shots of students from our school that were posted publicly on a spirit week padlet. However, since I did not want to use these videos without their owner’s permission (despite them already being open publicly), I decided to email them to ask for permission to use their video. Much to my surprise, one person originally said I couldn’t use their video. This was okay with me, but since they had 2 video clips in the original movie, I had to come up with 2 extra clips to fill in their gaps. I did this by asking my friends and brothers to film me some clips, and I made some myself too. Then, I had what I thought was the final version. However, later on, another person replied and said that I couldn’t use their video as well (which again, I respected and completely understood). However, in terms of making my video, this was challenging, as they had the only football video in the whole thing. Then, to solve this, I asked my brother if he could make one, and together we filmed a couple of football clips I could use (which I was very grateful for). At this point, I had re-made the video 3 times. However, after asking for some feedback from Mr. Turner, he mentioned that he liked it a lot, but suggested to include some clips of videos other than trick shots. I then went back and re-edited the video, with more clips of my brother and family friends doing some volleyball rallies (which we had filmed in between the time I started making this video and at this point). These were really challenging to fit in the video, as I had to keep it short and most of the spaces were filled up. I solved this by making the other clips shorter and trying to compress them together. I was now done with the video! 🙂
Another thing I did, as the Spirit Coordinator to advertise and promote this event, was to make a poster to encourage students to do some challenges. See the poster below.
Making this poster went relatively smoothly, and I ran into not nearly as many challenges as when I was making the video. I used Canva to make this poster and after some quick feedback and small edit suggestions from Mr. Turner, I made the final version (see above).
Next, after I advertised for all of the SAISA Events (By sending out many reminder emails to the students to participate), I decided that I would like to start participating myself. At this point, I was practicing both my volleyball and basketball skills almost daily, and I decided to take part in some of the challenges. Every week, during the period of time where I would usually do my basketball or volleyball afterschool activity, I warmed up and began attempting each of the challenges, trying to do my best in each one.
It took me ages to practice for each challenge, as I wanted to submit my best try at each of the challenges. I also was not practicing the skill or technical aspects of any of the sports (as I was mainly playing them to stay fit). This meant that for all the weeks before I submitted the final videos, I had to practice to get my skills and technique up to a level that I was satisfied with. I showed commitment to all 3 of the sports I usually do at SAISA (football, volleyball and basketball) by persevering and continuing to practice them weekly, as well as develop my skills. I practiced my basketball and volleyball skills daily after school, for at least an hour every day. For football, I joined an outside school club called TAFA to practice and develop my skills. For volleyball, my game instinct was really good, and I was in good practice of hitting and spiking the ball. I practiced my hit timing often with my brothers, and I was really happy with my timing, which was an aspect I needed to improve last year. However, my passing (bumping) and setting skills were a little rusty, as I needed to position my hands correctly above my head when setting (as I was a little nervous about hurting my fingers and I did not use proper technique). To improve my setting, I needed to set higher to keep a longer rally and to correctly position my hand above my head. For passing, I was swinging my arms too much, and not using my legs to lift the ball up, which caused it to pass uncontrollably sideways. To fix this, I practiced bending my knees to start passing and to make sure that I am fully extending my arms. Eventually, my passing improved to a point where I was happy to try the challenges. However, it is definitely still a skill aspect that I would like to continue working on and improving. For basketball, my shooting form needed slight correction, as I was mainly using my right hand to shoot, and dropping my left and supporting hand too quickly before releasing the ball. To improve, I practiced keeping both of my hands in contact with the ball until I let go of it. Additionally, my aim was quite a bit off, so I practiced and experimented with mainly free throws and layups (two of the challenge’s focus) to try to get better and find tricks of where to aim. For layups, this was relatively easy (as I only had to hit the top corner of the guiding box), but I found this more difficult for free throws (as I needed to work on keeping my shots consistent).
After I practiced for a few weeks, to get my skills up to par, I began filming some of my attempts at the challenges. I did this many times, so the best of all of the attempts were used. I only tried basketball challenges and volleyball ones.
To do the challenges, I tried the partner ones with my Mom, Kelly, my brother, Ethan and my friends who also participated (Sam and Stephie), came to my house so we could film the challenges. We all tried different combinations of volleyball passing partners, and we all submitted our best ones.
Below are some of our best attempts at a couple of the challenges.
Volleyball – Number of passes in a minute (with Ethan)
Basketball – Consecutive Free Throws – just me
Basketball – Trick Shot – Sam, Ethan, Stephie and I
After all of the videos for my school were submitted, Mr. Turner asked me to edit and put together all of the videos from each sport. This was a relatively challenging process for me, as I had a very short amount of time to complete each of the videos, so I was working at them during free periods in between my online classes. Additionally, it turns out that my above advertisement did not work as well as it could have, as hardly anyone submitted videos. This made making a one minute video of each sport extremely difficult, as there were hardly any submissions or videos to use. Since this was the case, I used all of the videos and edited them so that instead of many different videos playing, it was the same couple of videos (split apart onto different screens). However, I did manage to make somewhat interesting edits for the videos. I compelled the submission videos, as well as some of the videos that I used to make the advertisement to give a larger variety of different videos. However, once I had finished, a couple of late submissions came in and I had to add a few more videos to each of the sports (which was reasonably easy, but quite time consuming). Finally, I had finished the 3 videos with all of the submissions.
Basketball
Football
Volleyball
Looking back on the videos, and reflecting on them, I think that they would have been much more engaging and interesting to watch if I had added some background music to them. (I did not know that was an option to add music, but I should have inquired as it would have made the videos so much more engaging).
All of this work was in preparation for the SAISA virtual conference, which was held on November 21st. I signed up to participate in the call (instead of just watching the live stream), and I signed up for 5 of the 7 sessions, including Q and A with Kumar Sangakkara, Every Run has a Purpose, Introduction to Self Team & Others Awareness, Video Celebrations (where the videos I made, along with the ones of the other schools were displayed), and Panel Discussion (where we asked questions to SAISA Alumni). Overall, this conference was very interesting, and I really enjoyed listening to each of the speakers and engaging with other SASIA members.
Here are a couple of screenshots from the virtual conference:
Learning Outcomes:
LO1 Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth Students are able to see themselves as individuals with various abilities and skills, of which some are more developed than others.
LO2 Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process A new challenge may be an unfamiliar experience or an extension of an existing one. The newly acquired or developed skills may be shown through experiences that the student has not previously undertaken or through increased expertise in an established area.
LO4 Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences Students demonstrate regular involvement and active engagement in CAS.
By: Chloe Grandbois