Words can’t express how much I love basketball season. I remember first trying out in grade 8 and it was so much fun, playing against 11 and 12 graders when you’re the smallest and youngest one there made it challenging and exciting. At the time, I knew before I even tried out for the team that I wasn’t in the top 10, maybe not even top 20, but eventually I wanted to make the team. I remember how hard everyone trained, running that hill 30 times on a Saturday, conditioning on Wednesday afternoons, games against other schools on Friday evenings, tough practices on game skill on Tuesdays. I recall the time when the team was decided and my brother got selected with all his friends, that team was the dream team, and I thought OSC was going to win this season, and I kept going to practice, I didn’t miss a single session even though I didn’t make the cut because “hard work beats talent every single time”-KT. After that season in 8th grade, COVID struck and the South Asian International Sport Association competitions stopped, but basketball still enveloped my mind, when it started started again in 2022-2023, I was ready, I was physically fit with going to the gym every single day, watching high school basketball all the time, so when the coaches see me again after 3 years, they will see the improvement. My head was in the game.
“Control your B.E.E, ya’ll know what that means? it means breathing, emotions and expectations”. Our coaches always had something to tell us, but this message really stuck with me. One of them being regarded as Sri Lanka’s best basketball player, 3 time Division 1 US NAIA champion (Praneeth Udumangala) and our other coach being a boxer (Keeyon Tate). Some of the realest people you could ever meet, they will tell you what you need to hear, whether it hurts your feelings or not, and on the 29th
of November the team got selected, and it was one of the best days of my life. The coaches chose to talk about me to everyone who tried out and used me as an example to show hard work pays off. KT told everyone on the team about how I trained hard, he brought up how I never missed a practice ever since 8th grade, joining more practices that members of the team at the time and taught everyone about “if you want it, ya’ll gotta work for it”-KT, and it was a dream come true for me. Its one of the proudest moments for me because it showed me that putting in the effort can yield results, but I controlled my B.E.E. I became a shooting guards for the team because I tried hard to bring something to the team, which was my shooting. Games against Elizabeth Moir where I made 1/3 of our teams points shooting 3’s and the “buzzerbeater to win the game” which my coaches repeated when going over the stats on Saturday mornings.
From this moment onwards 11 of us who made team, trained tirelessly, hard, played games against other schools, pushed our body to the limit and trained like we wanted to win. All we had to do was go out there, on gam
-e day and perform, and we did. Averaging around 45-50 points per game, coming 3rd place in the tournament and really giving it our all, we were proud of the accomplishments we made, This was the first time since 2011 that OSC has ever made it in the winning brackets and I’m really proud to be in the team which could do this again in 11 years. I’ve not stopped playing basketball, we still keep playing with the team because next year, OSC will bring it home, and I’ll make sure to train harder so that ACS isn’t first, its OSC saying our chant with gold medals around our necks
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