By Garrison Koh (20S06C), Captain, Aw Zi Yann (20S07A), Captain, Nicholas Chang (20S06Q), Vice Captain, and Mabel Ong (20S03G), Vice Captain

Basketball is a sport where two teams of five players each compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball through the defender’s hoop. Because of its tenuous nature, the sport builds endurance, improves one’s coordination, develops self-discipline and strengthens one’s character. If you like physical contact, the exhilaration of scoring, and bonding with your teammates through exciting trainings, basketball might just be the right CCA for you!

Training can take the form of either court training or conditioning. Court training takes place 3 times a week—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Conditioning is held once a week, with the occasional gym session on Monday mornings. Court training refers to the official practices with our respective coaches, where we will usually work on individual skills, finishing, match drills and setplays. In between these court trainings, we may even have friendly tournaments with other schools. We typically spend a total of 9-10 hours training. The Boys’ team and Girls’ team train separately, but conditioning is conducted together.

To go more in depth, court trainings are directed by our coaches, whereas conditioning is directed by our teacher in charge. 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, the team can bond 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. Besides that, we also have recovery equipment such as foam rollers so that we can recover from muscle aches quickly and train harder.

One of the main events we have annually is the Gryphons Cup, where the alumni return to play against the current batch. It is a time where Raffles Basketballers are reunited and where younger players get to learn from their seniors through playing against each other! We also take part in various competitions such as the National Youth Institute (NYSI) Tournament, TNET, and Lions Cup in preparation for our season. Moreover, Raffles Basketball has biannual overseas trips to places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. The trip serves as a very good opportunity for us to play against foreign teams who are stronger and faster than us. Additionally, we can learn a lot about how foreign teams train and execute plays. Our main tournament would be the National School Games, which takes place from March to April, where we compete with other JCs in Singapore. We have placed well in previous years, with the girls attaining Champions in 2019 and the boys looking to reclaim their title. We’re hoping to do equally well or even better in 2020!

As a team, we push each other to run harder and do better, and we’re always there for each other as teammates. We are a team working hard towards the common goal of winning and we are determined to push ourselves to become better players. If you want to find out more, feel free to drop by our booth during open house!

Dream. Team. Fight. Win.