Let me see your funky gecko!

I was part of the SAISA basketball team this year and we came third! Because we had so many days off and different things that were happening, the trainings were all over the place, but we did manage to get ourselves together and we created a strong team. We got coached by the Sri Lankan national team coach and Mrs Ramberg came with us to Nepal as a second coach/chaperone.

The tournament was being held in Nepal which first of all had a very different climate, which made it harder to play. We had to be especially careful with the warming up because if you didn’t have your arms and legs covered there was a chance on pulling a muscle, which on SAISA really is the last thing you want to do. Secondly the capital Kathmandu was so different from Colombo and the culture was also pretty different, I noticed this when we got to go to the market before our semi-finals. My host family was incredibly nice, which really helped with feeling welcome.

We started the tournament incredibly well, we played well together and we won every match, but when we came to the semi-finals we lost to Bombay by one point, which really upset us, but in situations like this you win some and lose some, and you shouldn’t be too set back with the losses. So we played Dhaka in the consolation final and it was a nerve wracking game because Alice was injured so I had to play the entire time which I had not done yet, but it went really well and we won! I really got to know all the people on the team which was really nice because most of them were people that I wouldn’t really talk to in school.

Our flight back got cancelled due to fog both in Delhi and Kathmandu so we had to find a new flight, which with 12 people travelling was pretty difficult, but after 5 hours of waiting we found a flight that could take us back. The only problem was that we had to wait in Bombay for 9(!) hours, which was killing because we were all really tired and we wanted to go home, but we survived and we returned home on Tuesday morning, more than 12 hours later than planned, but it was an amazing experience and I look forward to next year’s SAISA!