SAISA Basketball Champions!

On the 2nd to the 5th of December 2011, 2 coaches and 10 girls including myself travelled to Mumbai, India for the SAISA Girls Basketball tournament. The two months leading up to that were intensive with 2 hour practises on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday but it definitely paid off as we came first place!

On the first day we played against Karachi (KAS) and Lahore (LAS) and won both games relatively easy, the coaches made sure that everyone had a chance to play making it fair for everyone. On the second day we faced more difficult teams, Dhaka (AISD) and Chennai (AISC) but we beat both teams again, by now everyone was really feeling the pressure and the excitement of making it this far.
The coaches kept us collected and we strategized our plan for the semi-finals and hopefully, finals.

On Sunday the 5th, were the semi-finals and we were up against Dhaka, which we had already played. However, they knew our tactics and we knew theirs and therefore it became harder to beat them because they had altered their plays to match ours. With a lot of effort and team cooperation we managed to beat them by a few points. The finals were really the most stressfull because had to play against Bombay, who had beaten us last year. The whole gym was for Bombay and we only had the 5 subs to cheer us on, but it kept us going and we managed to beat them!

OSC has never been champions of any SAISA before, so it was an amazing experience and I definitely learnt a lot about working together and how to manage so much pressure.

Runners Up in the Girls Basketball Tournament Colombo!

Starting on the 7th of November the British School of Colombo hosted a basketball tournament which we took part in, 6 other school were competing to be called the champions of the tournament.

We lost the first game against AIS but we won every single game after that, placing us in the finals! We had to play the same team we had lost against in the beginning and sadly lost again. But, we were still second!

In total we only had about 6 practises to get the team ready before the tournament so I am very proud of everyone in the team! I think all of us, especially the members of the team that weren't on SAISA last year, have learnt a lot from this experience and it will definitely benefit us in the SAISA tournament.

I think that I have grown stronger in understanding the fundamentals of boxing out the other players and because I'm a post player it is really important to get the rebound.

I hope this has been as much as a positive experience for everyone else as it was for me!

D.A.W.G Food Drive

Over the past few weeks D.A.W.G (which I am a leader of) has been collecting food to donate to a local dog pound.

We put boxes in every class in primary and every homeroom in secondary, we wrote down the amount of points that could be earned with certain items such as;

• Rice - 5 points per kg
• Canned Dog Food - 8 points per can
• Dry Dog Food - 10 points per kg
• Tick Shampoo - 10 points per bottle
• Towels/Toys - 5 points per item

On Thursday 6 October we collected all the food that had been donated and we counted up all the points according to homeroom/class. Grade 4 won the pizza party with 284 points! And the members of DAWG went to donate the food at the local dog pound. The pound contains 139 dogs and 62 cats, so they really did need the donations.

Sports Day!

To bring back the spirit and compitition to Secondary, the PE department organized a Sports Day on Wednesday 7 September. The day was devided into 5 activities; volleyball, football, kick-ball, basketball and swimming. I only signed up for basketball but because a lot of people didn't show up I played football, kick-ball and basketball. Personally, I enjoyed basketball the most because I haven't played it since the SAISA season which was in February.




Red, the house colour I'm in,  turned out first place, which was really surprising because it has never happened before. I'm happy that I went to this sports day because it turned out more fun than I thought!

D.A.W.G! - Promoting the Service.

On Wednesday 17th of August all the leaders had to 'promote' their individual service making it easier for the younger students to choose which one they wanted to join. There were tables set up for us and we hung up a poster from the front with some pictures and basic information about D.A.W.G. I also wrote a short paragraph explaining what the service does that they can take and read over in their own time. Here is the paragraph :

"You’ve probably seen all the dogs around the streets in and around Colombo, OSC decided they wanted to help them and set up DAWG. DAWG, unlike most CAS programmes works with dogs and cats instead of people, we raise money during majority of the year and using that money we finance a sterilization campaign. Here, dogs and cats are brought in and the vets that we paid for sterilize and vaccinate them. Last year, a reporter from Lanka Woman came to write an article about us in the magazine. To raise this money we organize various events from movie nights to selling things that we make, the DAWG T-Shirts for example. In the beginning of the year we also have a dog food drive, where each class brings in as much dog food as possible and the class with the most wins a pizza party. If you have creative ideas on what we can make or how to raise more money, or if you simply just want to help dogs and cats in and around Colombo, join DAWG and really make a difference to these animals!"

Here's a picture of most of the CAS leaders at the tables:

CAS Goals For My Final School Year!

Being in the last year of IB brings along a lot of expectations and requirements, however, it's up to the student how they handle this. My plan for this last year is to maintain a good balance between academics, CAS and my freetime, although that might get a bit challenging sometimes.

Last year I thought I managed to also maintain a balance between the amount of Creativity, Action and Service I did. Because we don't have Week Without Walls this year  I realize that I have to work a little more to meet the Service requirements, but having so many options available to me, I'm sure that won't be a problem to find.

Creativity.

• This year I'm planning on starting the drums, I have previous experience with playing them but I want to expand that knowledge and accept new challenges. I would be doing this once a week.
• For this year's high school producation (a musical) I'm planning on helping with the costumes, giving me the freedom to design and possibly making the costumes used. From August to November.
• Any other opportunities that come along to fullfill the Creativity requirement for CAS will definately be used.

Action.

• I will be trying out for SAISA basketball, I was aiming on trying out for Football so it would be something different from last year, but because they changed over the seasons SAISA football would be in February, which regarding my academic work is very inconvenient.
• To add to this I will also be going horseriding once every two weeks because I really want to maintain the level I was at.
• This time I will post more regular updates about how the trainings went etc to watch my progress.

Service.

• Paul, last year's leader for DAWG gave the leadership to both Mo and I, so throughout the year we will both be running that. Our main goal for DAWG is to come up with new ideas so that we raise more money for the final sterilization.
• If I think that throughout the year I have done too little service there is always the opportunity of going on a build for Habitat or helping out at any other CAS.
• Like last year, I will be posting updates everytime DAWG organizes/contributes to a major event.

I'm looking foward to this year and meeting many of its challenges and new experiences!

Spotlight, Floodlight or Full Stage Wash?

Due to other commitments (Basketball) I could act in this year's Secondary School Production 'The Curious Savage' written by John Patrick, so I challenged myself by designing the lighting plot that would be used for the play and I would be the person in controll of the lighting panel on the nights itself.

I had no idea where to start this progress because I would never have even imagined having to design a lighting plot, Ms. Grant helped by giving a very useful booklet that had a lot of information about the different types of light, how to design a lighting plot and how to make a cue sheet. All of this was really useful in producing the final ideas for the lighting of the play. What I found very challenging was that I had absolutely no experience with lighting at all and therefore had to learn everything about it in a short period of time and to then also be responsible for making sure all the lighting was in its correct place and that the transitions ran smoothly.

Once I had designed the lighting plot and Ms Grant approved of it, I had to learn how to control the lighting board, which had a total of 48 switches, each responsible for different lighting. After understanding that I came to rehearsals to help both me and the actors getting used to working toghether, it helped me understand how the transitions would work and where I would have to for example aim the spotlight or the intensity of the light. Lighting and sound work tightly together and in the beginning Joyce and I had some trouble syncronizing our actions, but after a few practises that went perfectly.

I learnt a great amount about lighting while doing this because I would never have realized that there was so much work behind the lighting of a stage. I felt a lot of  pressure because I realized that the actors have put so much time and effort into rehearsing this and I did not want to mess it up, but both night went really well!