ACSC Tournament

By Luke Ng

During the week of February 13, 2023, both the boys and girls varsity basketball teams traveled internationally to participate in the ACSC basketball tournament. The boys traveled to Morrison Academy in Taichung, Taiwan, while the girls went to ICS Bangkok.

The tournament was a round-robin with two pools, Pool A and Pool B. The first two days, the teams would play within their pools, and both Dalat teams were able to go undefeated in their pool. The third day marked the start of the playoffs, and the games were decided based on your ranking in your pool. The Dalat boys got a 14-point win against the home team, Morrison, but lost against Grace. The girls were able to go undefeated all the way and secured a spot in the championship game.

On the final day of the tournament, the boys had to play Morrison one more time to advance to the finals. The home crowd was loud, kids were screaming, and the biased refs were making bad calls for Dalat. However, there was nothing that Morrison could do to slow us down, and the Dalat boys beat Morrison by 8 points to have a chance at winning the gold. 

The boys would once again face Grace to decide who would be the champions of the 2023 ACSC tournament. It was a tight battle between the two teams, with Grace holding a small lead at the end of the first half. However, with tight defense and intense offense, Dalat was able to tie the game at the end of the third. Both teams fought hard in the fourth quarter, but Grace's tough full-court press defense helped them to steal the ball from us many times, and Dalat ended up losing the game. It was a disappointing loss for the boys, but Dalat had shown everyone how hard we fight, and Team Captain Soo Wei Goh said, "After losing in a close loss and coming 2nd, I couldn't be more proud of our team. We fought our hardest and made history as we're the first team to achieve such a feat."

Faith managed to take down the Dalat girls in a blowout win, even though Dalat had originally beaten them in the semi-finals. The girls played the best they could during their tournament, and despite the loss, team captain Haylee Douglas said, "I have such an amazing team who work so hard and do everything with passion, and I'm going to miss being able to lead and play with them again."