Basketball is a game for fun and friendship - AIS girls team

Angu Rajendran

Most Valuable Player Natasha de Alwis of the Asian International School team that won the International Schools Under 17 basketball championships recently, said that they are all good players but really it was coach Ajit Kuruppu who made us into a winning team.

“Our coach made us practice every technique for hours, especially the roll-over. Even though we were lazy sometimes to practice, it was so useful in every match that we played,” said forwards Amani and Isurika.

The jubilant AIS team has a beautiful blend of contrasting personalities who all love basketball but take it in their stride. The team has a couple of house captains, an Interact Club Secretary, actresses in the Shakespeare drama festival, and champion athletes. “We don’t let basketball overwhelm us. We think of basketball as part of our life, not our whole life,” said the girls, most of whom are straight As students.

“We win sometimes, we lose sometimes but this time we won because we wanted to win so badly. In our minds we were determined to win the tournament even before we started playing.”

However, as captain Sachini says, “We were kind of confident that we would win the tournament because we had practised so hard. On the day of the finals, we simply had to put all our practice into play, and it worked.

“We really thought that we would play against Gateway in the finals. We were a bit scared because they are tough players and play a very hard and extremely aggressive game and we were relieved when British School beat them in the semi-finals. We had already beaten British School in the group matches so we were more confident to play against them,” said Sachini “although British is also a very good team and we beat them by only one point in the earlier match.”

Coach Ajit Kuruppu had planned to guard British School’s star player throughout the final match, while the other four players would stay in the zone. “British School speeded up the game in the second half of the match but we simply had to get the girls to fall back deep into the zone and prevent any drive-in shots,” said coach Ajit. “Of course we had a height advantage with Madhumitha Ravi towering above most players and collecting both offensive and defensive rebounds and Natasha de Alwis preventing their ace player from scoring also contributed greatly to the match. AIS girls were also more confident because they had beaten British School in an earlier match though only by one point.”

“The difference between a girls team and a boys team is simply that we don’t think that any one player is better or worse than the others. We treat everyone as equal, whatever their age or ability. We have a thirteen year old in our first five - Anaan. Although she may be younger than most of us, her skills are just as good as the others,” said another player Thivedi Narayana.

“We are a family and just like a family we fight as much as we are friends,” said Amani. “We always advice each other, think of something inspirational to say though fail miserably most of the time but we share our tears, laughter, disappointments and glory. We are a team in every sense of the word - we stick together.”

“What about relaxing? What do you girls do for fun?

Basketball is fun. We pretty much have no time for anything else. We practice hard. Go home. Study till late at night and fall asleep and our day starts again with a basketball practice. We enjoy our busy lives though we pretty much have no time to relax.”

Here is a successful team that enjoys basketball for everything that it is - a game for fun and friendship.