By Tan Kang Yi (19S03F), Girls’ Captain, and Bridget Lum (19S03C), Girls’ Vice Captain
Have you ever seen people playing basketball or heard the sound of shoes squeaking against the floor and the excited hollers of both players and spectators? Ever admired Stephen Curry’s shooting form or Kyrie Irving’s handles? If you’ve ever wanted to start playing basketball, now is a good time as any. Besides being able to participate in exhilarating matches, if you find sweating it out, physical contact, and bonding with your teammates through trainings exciting, basketball might just be the right CCA for you!
A typical school week during pre-season has 3 training days – Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We have two types of trainings, court training and conditioning. Court training is when we will have our official practices with our respective coaches, while we work out our muscles to get stronger physically during conditioning. In a week, we might spend a total of 9-10 hours training. Boys and Girls train separately, but conditioning is conducted together.
To go more in depth, our court trainings are directed by our coaches. Thus we do a variety of individual or team drills that get the team to work better together. Often, we play against each other on opposing teams for practice. As basketball is a team sport, being able to play well together as a team can be even more important than individual skill, so by training together over a period of time, it allows the team to bond and create chemistry with each other. As for conditioning, we use various equipment such as cones, platforms, balancing boards, ropes et cetera instead of going to the gym. Although it is tiring, both conditioning and training are often fun and fulfilling.
One of the main events we have in a year is the Gryphons Cup, whereby alumni and current players play against each other. Not only will it reunite most Raffles basketballers, it also serves as an experience for the younger players to learn from their seniors through playing against each other! We also take part in other various competitions such as the National Youth Institute (NYSI) Tournament in preparation for our season. Moreover, to gain more experience, Raffles Basketball has always flown overseas to Taiwan, with 2018 being an exception where we flew to Hong Kong. Having the opportunity to play against foreign players who are stronger, faster and better than we are is really exciting as we can see how other countries play and how we can improve ourselves! The main event would of course be the National School Games which takes place from March to April. We have placed well in previous years, with the girls attaining first runners-up last year and the boys looking to reclaim the title, so we’re hoping to do equally well or even better in 2019!
As a team, we push each other to run harder and do better, and we’re always there for each other as teammates. It doesn’t matter if you have prior experience as long as you have the right attitude and a passion for the game. If you want to find out more, feel free to drop by our booth during open house!
Dream. Team. Fight. Win.
