By Garrison Koh (20S06C), Captain, Aw Zi Yann (20S07A), Captain, Nicholas Chang (20S06Q), Vice Captain, and Mabel Ong (20S03G), 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 as good a time as any. Besides participating 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 have our official practices with our respective coaches, while conditioning is when we work out our muscles to get stronger physically. 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 and 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 is able to bond and create chemistry with one another. As for conditioning, we use various equipment such as cones, platforms, balancing boards, ropes, et cetera, instead of going to the gym. Although they are tiring, both conditioning and training are often fun and fulfilling.
One of the main events we have every 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 play! We also take part in various other competitions such as the National Youth Sports Institute (NYSI) Tournament in preparation for our season. Moreover, to gain more experience, Raffles Basketball has flown annually to Taiwan, with 2018 being an exception where we flew to Hong Kong instead. 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 champions last year and the boys looking to reclaim the title, so 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. 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.