Basketball is a season 2 sport, I have been a part of the team for the past three years. I have been able to grow both mentally and physically with the team over the years. This year the season took quite a turn for me with my ligament injury on my foot. However, with the right mentality and constant visits to the physiotherapist I was able to recover over the course of three weeks. This year I was fortunate enough to travel to Amman, Jordan for the SAIA basketball tournament. The South Asia International School Association (SAISA) is an association of different international school around South Asia and the Middle east that get together over the course of the year to compete in various sports. The tournament contains 8 different teams from Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jordan and Oman. There is a high level of competition in this tournament as varsity level team participate. Ultimately what matters is the sportsmanship and the meaningful friendship created with the other teams.
The trip was from 6th of February till the 10th of February 2019. The traveling team consisted of 10 high school girls. We all waited at the front porch for the adventure to commence. This SAISA trip differed from others as we were given an entire day to ourselves. We were given the rare opportunity to visit the dead sea in Jordan, it was an experience was a life time. This was a whole new experience for me as I had only ever seen such places on Instagram or spoken about the political issues in class. It felt beyond surreal when we were floating in the extremely salty sea. It was a great start to the trip as we were able to take a breather prior to the hectic days of the tournament.
The tournament was organized in a round robin style. The 8 competing schools were segregated into two different pools. We were a part of pool B which consisted of: Karachi American School (KAS), The American International School of Muscat (TAISM), American Community School of Amman (ACS), and the Overseas School of Colombo. Our first game was against ACS we lost against them with a score of 36 – 24. It was difficult and pressurizing game as the entirety of the school was there to support the home team. When considering the mental pressure that was placed upon us, our team did an excellent job. Our second game was against KAS, which we won with a significant margin of 39 -13. It was great recovery for our team when considering the previous game. This put us in the right mental space for the second day of the tournament.
The second day we commenced by playing TAISM, which we won with a 21- 19. It was quite a tight game and forced us to maintain a strong mental game when the score was equivalent. However, we managed to take the win at the fourth quarter with the mentality of preserving through the difficulties we faced throughout the game. After having beaten 2 out of the 3 teams we played in our pool we ended up taking second place in our pool. This placed in a position to play the 3rd place team from the other pool. We played Lincoln school (LS) and won with a score of 37 – 13, which allowed us to proceed to the semi finals. This placed our team in a desirable position. I was overly thrilled to have even made it this far in the competition as the first year I made varsity basketball we ended up taking 6th place overall.
On the third day we played the American International School of Chennai in the semi finals. We ended up losing with a score of 28 – 42. They had a great offensive play which was difficult for our strong defense to break. We played our hearts out, which made us feel satisfied knowing we did our absolute best without having slacked off. This still placed us in an incredible position as we still qualified to fight for third place against the American International School of Dhaka (AISD). AISD has been our rival school for many years now and have always been one of the more difficult schools for us to beat. We went onto the court knowing it was last game of the season and this was our last chance to play to our fullest potential. Though we were exhausted from the past days, we managed to maintain a solid composer necessary for the final game. It wasn’t one of our best games, we needed up losing, which left us taking fourth place overall. It took a mental toll on us. However, I was able to maintain a strong mentality through the tournament and never really felt discouraged. This was in fact my CAS goal for the year as I wanted to grow mentality as it is an important aspect for a sportswoman.
It was a great season overall, I was overjoyed with the commitment and effort placed into the sport. It was proud of how much I improved as a player over the course of the season. Each training session I pushed myself more and more, ultimately reaching a new level as a player. The commitment and hard work I placed into each session was evident with the major changes in my overall play. I hope to play again next year as it will be my final year!
1,2 – 1,2 – 1,2,3,4 GECKOS AOUSH!