SAISA Basketball Final Evaluation

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!

SAISA Basketball Week 6

During this week, we concentrated on aspects which were areas for improvement, such as physical strengths, layups with powers and some of the offensive motions. These areas were clearly our weaknesses as we have seen from the tournament last week. We also played our final game against British School of Colombo, in which we managed to win by 37-30 (or something close to that). I feel that our weaknesses have improved a bit, but still not quite there yet, so I hope that we can improve as much as we can in the remaining 2 practices. 

SAISA Basketball Week 5

This week was full of games. On Tuesday we played against one of the international schools in Colombo, and on Friday and Saturday there was a small tournament organized by Mr. Shipley between 4 schools, Colombo International School, Asia International School, Gateway College and our school. So in total we got to play 6 matches this week.

This week was a really good opportunity for us to test what we have been practicing for about a month. We were definitely faced with challenges, specially on Friday and Saturday where we played 2 games and 3 games respectively. However, we really collaborated as a team and showed commitment and perseverance by playing to the best of our ability at all time on the court. These games made our strengths and areas for growth evident. As for the team strength, I believe it was adapting and quickly changing to different types of offense and defense, depending on the opponent’s tactics. Fast breaks were also seen to be our strength as well. As for the team weaknesses, they were probably the lack of communication, the judgments to pass or to shoot.  Guards cutting into the key was also seen less, and this is something that guards will need to work on.

On a personal level, my strengths were driving, handling and running the tactics that we were supposed to run. I was always aware of my positions on the court and also told others to adjust their position when they were out of position. As a point guard, I have also shown a leadership in the offense by telling other players to get opened and make passes. My weaknesses were driving layups and the judgement in terms of the passes that I made. I also realized that as a senior, I need to show a better leadership on and off the court to maintain the sportsmanship as well as to keep the team together as one. 

It was clear that we were playing better as we played more games. For example, the Saturday’s games were a lot better played compared to Friday’s. Each member has definitely developed or improved skills and also realized the strengths and weaknesses, which we can strive to improve in the remaining weeks until the SAISA tournament. 

SAISA Basketball Week 4

This week the main focus was working on different types of offense and defense. As for offense, we have worked on the different movements that each player could do and methods to create spaces which the offense can exploit. As for defense, we have worked on 2-3 zone, 1-3-1 zone, man to man and full court press defense. This week was mainly increasing our types of offense and defense that we could use so that we can play against teams which use many different types of offense and defense. And on Saturday, we had a match against Royal Institute at our OSC gym. The score was 41-50 and we were unable to beat them, however, overall I’m very happy with our performances.

Since it was the second match of this season, I was less nervous compared to last time, but it was still a challenge to face a team whom we don’t know what kind of basketball they play. However, we collaborated together to minimize their performance and maximizing our chance to make the baskets. In the first two quarters, we were just getting used to their basketball, but in the 3rd and the 4th quarter, we performed really well in defense and we were also scoring points by exploiting the open spaces, which is something we have been working on in practices. Although we lost the match, overall our performance was much better than last time

Hopefully next week we will also get to play a game against another school so that we can really learn our strengths and weaknesses, and adjust anything that is needed so that we can play at our best in the SAISA tournament.

SAISA Basketball Week 3

This week we’ve mainly concentrated on the offensive and the defensive flows, so that we get a better idea of how we can play offense and defense. On Friday, we played a match against one of the international school in Colombo. The score was 47-39, and we managed to win our first match. Unfortunately I got injured after playing just a few minutes, so I was on the bench for the rest of the game, but we was a very good opportunity to see where we are at.

It was a challenge for me to play the game because it was the first match of this season. I was nervous and I believe that prevented me from playing at my best quality, and this is something that I need to work on. However, I believe that this will naturally come, as we play more games in the next few weeks. As a team, what we need to work on is specially the defense. Although we were practicing that in the practices, doing the same in a match is a different story, and we realized that we were often not doing what we should have been doing. This is another area for improvement that we need to work towards as a team. 

Overall, this week was a good one in terms of getting the feel of how the matches are like. I hope to improve my skills more, and contribute to the team and play at our best!

SAISA Basketball Week 2

The 2nd week of SAISA basketball training has finished. Just like the first week, we have been mainly concentrating on the fundamental skills through various kinds of training. However, now we spend about 15 minutes to play a small 4 on 4, or sometimes 5 on 5 games to see where we are at, and to apply what we did in the drills in the real game situations.

So far, I have been showing my commitment and perseverance by attending every session and coming to practices on time. We, as a team, are now a lot better in terms of collaboration and communication, which was something that we lacked last week. We hope to improve this throughout the season, as it will certainly help us in the tournament.

As 2 weeks have passed, I now have more awareness regarding my strengths and areas for improvements in basketball. In my opinions, my strengths are skills mostly needed for guards, such as speed, agility, handling, driving and passing. Although my jump shots are relatively good, that’s one of the areas that I need to work on, and also driving layups between the posts is also the area that has a lot of room for improvements. As I’m more aware of my weaknesses, I make an effort to try different methods and hopefully find a way to improve. I hope that these weaknesses will improve as we practice more and more.

SAISA Basketball Week 1

This week was the very first week of the SAISA basketball training. There are 4 practices a week: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. For this week’s practices, we’ve been mainly concentrating on conditioning as well as to revise some of the fundamentals, such as dribbling, positioning, passing, etc through variety of drills.

As this was the first week, I saw many lack of communication between our members during the practices. Basketball is a team sports that requires a lot of communication, and thus this is an area that we, as a team, needs to work on. I believe that this will naturally improve as we practice more. So far, I have been attending every session, and I hope to keep this up, as one of my goals is to attend every practice throughout the season.

 

SAISA Basketball

This year, SAISA Boys Basketball is hosted at our school OSC, and I have decided to try out for it. The tournament takes place from the 16th to the 18th of March, and the practices start from the 31st of January.

Before starting the practices, I have set the goals which I hope to be able to achieve by the end of this season:

• To undertake the challenge of trying out for SAISA basketball for the first time
• To increase the awareness of my strength and areas of growth in terms of basketball as well as my behaviors
• To work collaboratively with the team members to perform at our best quality possible
• To show perseverance and commitment by going for EVERY practice
• To develop new/enhance my basketball skills and others, such as leadership qualities
• To undertake the challenge to be the starting member (preferably a point guard) of the team
• To show a good sportsmanship in basketball

Although it is the last semester of IB and the schedules are very tight with various assignments and exams, I hope to achieve a balance between academics and outside activities, and this is one opportunity to do so. Therefore I hope to achieve as many of my goals as possible by the end of this exciting tournament! I will be giving updates regularly and reflect on how I’m going towards achieving the goals.