The exciting weekend of SAISA Basketball has finished and overall our Gecko team finished 2nd, after losing a very close final game against Lincoln School.

There were so many different things that I’ve learned and grasped through the SAISA Basketball. I have challenged myself by dedicating my time to SAISA Basketball for the first time, despite at the very important time for the academics. It was rather hard to fit in the team at the beginning because it was the first time I’ve been exposed to the SAISA training and the pressure, but as I came for more practices the pressure was gone and I was able to really push myself as hard as I possibly could.
Through the practices I became aware of my strengths and areas for improvement. This became evident specially during the early practice matches against other international schools in Colombo. I was able to improve my weak skills and further develop my strengths before the SAISA tournament, which certainly helped me to perform well during the tournament. I also developed my leadership and sportsmanship skills during the tournament and this is another accomplishment to be proud of. I believe that my leadership from other activities, such as community service and being the captain of badminton team etc helped me in this aspect. These are important qualities that one needs to be successful in the future, and therefore this is one aspect of SAISA that made it a very valuable experience for me.
Throughout the SAISA season including the tournament, we collaborated as a team to challenge any obstacles before us and push ourselves to the highest level possible. I believe that the team collaboration was what really brought us to be one of the strongest teams in this tournament.
I was able to show my perseverance and commitment in this tournament by coming to EVERY practice. This was definitely a huge accomplishment for me, specially at this time of the year when there is a lot of workload.
I was able to achieve the goal of becoming the starting point guard. For the first few weeks, I was the backup and didn’t get to play as much as other starting players played, but as I pushed myself harder to improve my skills, I’ve managed to earn this really valuable position. This is a clear evidence that I’ve developed my basketball skills specially as a guard. This is definitely something that I’m very proud of!!!

Overall, the SAISA Basketball was a very enjoyable experience. I’ve managed to achieve my goals, and even more than that by communicating with other SAISA athletes from other schools who have different backgrounds and so on. I strongly feel that I’ve developed myself as an athlete, which will definitely help me in the future when doing other team sports!