As I have done since the age of 9, I signed up to play basketball for my local club during the winter championship season which runs from September to November each year.
This particular season I was playing in an under 19's (girls) premier team- the highest level in my state.
Our teamed comprised of girls from a mixture of ages: me, the youngest, at 16, to the older players whom were 18, not far off 19. All 8 of us were national level players, a further 5 also national intensive training scholarship holders (myself included). Because of this, were expecting a pretty easy season, no other team in the competition had a line up quite like ours.
However, we had a pretty shocking start.
The first obstacle we faced was that we had no coach...
We decided to vote in one of the older girls to take up the role of player-coach however trying to coach whilst also being a player is always going to have its challenges. We all had to somewhat take on some more responsibility- we had to organise substitutes and timeouts and also had to pull players off and be critical of their game when necessary. This was really weird to start off. I personally, being the youngest (by far) on the team was really hesitant when it came to criticising the older girl's games. Eventually though, I came out of my shell and by the end of the season didn't have an issue ripping into the older girls
The very first game of the season was really chaotic. Trying to sort out the whole no-coach-scenario on top of our first-game-back nerves got the best of us. All of us played really averagely and didn't work together at all. We started the game poorly, and sort of gave up after half time. We ended up losing by 3 points, which was the first loss the team has faced in a very long time (years in fact).
We took a lot from the game. We realised that maybe we were a little too full of ourselves at the start of the season and that we really needed to work as a team and not give up during tight games.
We won game two and by game three we definitely had gotten our 'mojo' back. We cruised through the remainder of the season, never coming within 10 points of another team.
When it came time for the finals series to commence, we again were feeling pretty comfortable that we come out with gold medals no problem.
How silly to think that...
When Grandfinal day came along, we were all very excited but not the last bit nervous, and totally unaware of the shock we were about to get
The opposing team started the game firing, and took the lead after first quarter by 6. By half time we had made a comeback and lead the game by 3.
Third quarter was like the quarter from hell. The referee must have had some sort of attitude change over the half time break because he started penalising us left right and centre. Now, for those of you (assuming someone else ever reads this lol) who don't know, if you get 5 penalties in a game you get disqualified from there match. By the end of the third quarter, our tallest player (some may say she was our most crucial as well) was benched with 5 penalties, and out next best 2 were threatened with 4. We really had to be smart during the planning phases for 4th quarter and come up with strategies to minimise the potential for them to receive their 5th and final calls.
Fourth quarter begun and our strategies immediately failed us, within the first 4 minutes oath of the girls were disqualified.
6 minutes to go, we were left with zero substitute players (3 of our 8 having been disqualified) and were only up by a measly 2 points. Now the nerves had finally started to kick in.
The quarter constantly went back and fourth - they would be up, then we would, then they would be up again.
We ended up winning the game by 3 points in the last few minutes.
It was so, so (so) stressful
But hey, a win is a win and we came out season champions, gold medals and all.
I really enjoyed this particular season, I came away with a lot (especially in terms of some of the learning outcomes)
Not having a coach taught me to plan and initiate activates, as did the referee's sudden attitude change inn the grand final. We had to work collaboratively as a team to come up with strategies during the game, and just to simply play the game. Basketball is a team sport which means (you guessed it) team work. I also came away from the season with an increased awareness of my own strengths and weaknesses. I learnt that I need to be assertive- this I discovered during the early weeks of the season when I was hesitating to be critical of older players games. However after discovering this and working at it, I learnt that I actually posses the capability to be assertive (which now comes a lot easier) During the closer games, I individually and as part of a collective team, had to learn to persevere though the rough quarters in order to be successful at the end. And last but not least, I developed a lot of new skills ranging from people skills, to my actual skills within the game itself.
I had a lot of fun being active this basketball season and am looking forward to playing in the future
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