Activity – SAISA Boys Volleyball 2023
For the Activity section of CAS I am dedicated to the OSC SAISA Volleyball team for the first semester of the school year. Ever since August 25th, there have been constant volleyball training sessions. Rigorous, intense, and not for those who are not determined. The main team that I am apart of has been training 5 days a week since the 25th, three times in the morning on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, In the evening on Tuesday and Friday with a lengthy game on Friday evenings. All of this for the annual SAISA Boys Volleyball tournament that OSC has the pleasure of hosting this year. Schools from Oman, Jordan, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh all come together on November 2-4 for a 3 day tournament to be crowned SAISA Champions. The photo below is of the game we played on September 22nd against Piliyandala College who showed up on motorcycles and full grown beards. The experience of the SAISA Volleyball team has been amazing to say the least. The way everyone is so dedicated to getting better, winning and willing to sacrifice for the team really allows the team to bond like no other and create the supportive but competitive atmosphere a team needs. It is also worth to note that OSC is coming off as reigning champions from last year where the team travelled to Nepal where we were able to reach gold. With a hunger to do the same and quite a young team we hope to achieve the same feat as the year before.
(Photo From OSC Facebook)
Service
For the S and C part of my CAS project as mentioned before I am a part of the Gecko Gear service group. For our first lesson we met as just Hadiya, Irina and I because our other two members were sick and we identified our goals and what do within the next couple lessons. We then divvied up goals and gave each other roles. My main role as a leader of the service and a member was to organize logistics so throughout the next couple of lessons I set up an email for our service ([email protected]) and upgraded our editing software by getting our service a CanvaEDU account. On the other side I helped design the volleyball hoodie for the teams and met with the supplier at lunch on Monday, September 18th. We also gathered two new service members in Sandeep De Silva and Adam Wassef within the past week. There was a lot of work to do in terms of service for the first SAISA as not only was it rushed to get the supplier to make the jerseys on time but we will also be hosting SAISA volleyball so we needed to make extra merchandise for the travelling team. So far service is going well and we have lots of goals upcoming such as: making a new logo, designing the outfits for the second and third season, design a general OSC logo and many more.
(Photo of google drive folder of my service groups main ideas.)
DP Orientation
On August 23rd to August 25th the grade and I were away on the DP1 Orientation trip. The purpose of the trip is to create bonds, have great experiences, and overall get closer to the people you are going to be around and working with for the next two years of your academic life. As a grade we travelled to Borderlands in Kitulgala, Sri Lanka. Throughout the three day period we indulged in activities like white water rafting, canyoning through marvel canyon, morning yoga, hiking up to Belilena cave, doing teambuilding exercises (like trying to flip over a rug with 15 people on it without getting off it), and even jumping off a 9m cliff. Not to mention the food was divine. The photo displayed above is of my group and I (the furthest boy on the left) before we were about to go canyoning at marvel canyon.
CAS Goals
(OSC Boy’s Volleyball team (Myself shown wearing #7) and Local team photo after a game, Photo courtesy of OSC Photographer.)
Over the summer I was working on quite a few creativity, activity and service goals myself. On the activity side I was going to the gym regularly to improve my performance and to help with my goals of doing SAISA over the academic year. I also help move and donate my grandmothers furniture and other goods to south Asian refugees in the Connecticut area. I was also apart of a study camp for a few weeks.
My goals and learning outcomes for this year is:
- For my activity, I aim to tryout for SAISA Volleyball. We will be hosting the tournament this year for volleyball so no overseas travel but nonetheless it will be an amazing and fun opportunity to connect with teammates and work together. This is a measurable goal for me because I can count the hours of how much I am working and also I can measure my improvements and note them down. This will work on my communication skills and my collaboration skills as well as cognitive and decision making skills.
- I aim to do service through the group Gecko Gear. The Gecko Gear service group which I am leader of aims to help the kids on campus by using proceeds of sold merch and hosting clothing drives to give resources to the kids on campus. This service hits the service aspect of CAS because we aim to host clothing drives by asking the OSC kids to donate excess and extra clothes that either don’t fit or they don’t wear and we will donate these clothes to the ‘kids on campus’ program so that they have comfortable and nice clothes from our service. Also we plan to ask the teachers in charge of the services which have the ‘kids on campus’ to ask them what supplies they need so we can donate to them when we make our profits off merchandise because we can’t keep it.
- I aim to be creative through the same service group gecko gear. This service requires us to be creative because our services main job is to design clothes and other merchandise items to sell and maybe eventually sell merch for student led campaigns and projects. Not only are we completing creativity through this but also, through handling the logistics behind the production of goods for the school and getting those connections are valuable aspects we can learn as part of the gecko gear service.
- In the images above I think is a good way of displaying my creativity, activity and service because I am designing an outfit for school, for my service and it is for the activity I am doing because I created the tournament shirt to give to all the teams for the SAISA competition we are hosting from November 2nd to the 4th for Boys Volleyball.