Sam Huang
After six hours of traveling in a van on Friday, November 18th, the Dalat boys’ basketball team arrived in ISKL for three basketball games, with hopes that each one would further prepare them for the biggest home tournament of the year in February: the ACSC tournament.
The Dalat boys started off their first game in ISKL against the Alamis club team, a local adult basketball club. Despite being outsized, the boys were ready to play; however, as soon as the game started, the boys dropped to a ten-point deficit. Their defense wasn’t rotating fast enough, their offense wasn’t running smoothly, and their coach, Chuck Arnold, was not happy. Soon enough, the team found themselves in a mess, being down 35-48 with only a quarter left to catch-up. Before the starters went back onto the court to play the last quarter, Coach Arnold shouted to his players in a huddle, “Come on guys. Winning and losing is a choice. Now, what do you choose? If you want it, go out there and take it.” His inspirational words relit the fire within the boys. They ended up scoring 28 points in the quarter and almost had the game under their belts, but they couldn’t secure a rebound in the final seconds of the game to close the point gap between the teams. The game ended as a loss for the boys, but they didn’t let the lost prove them weak. To them, they fell—but they fell forward and didn’t stay on the ground for long.
On the very next morning, the Dalat boys went up against Jakarta International School (JIS). Again, the Dalat boys were outsized, but they didn’t lose hope. Throughout the game, the two teams were pretty much evenly matched. The Dalat boys were still struggling with running their offense and defense correctly, but they still managed to find a way to keep the scores close. Towards the end of the game, the Dalat boys started to play like they’ve been playing in practice and proved to be the better team by winning the close game 58-55.
They went on to take another game from ISKL. This time the boys played fantastic offense and impenetrable defense to blow out the ISKL boys in a 64-30 win. Felix Tobias (11) and Daniel Kang (10) were raining shots from three feet beyond the three-point line, while Wei Sing Goh (12) was dominating from within. After watching the game film on the way back to Penang, which their manager Dominic Fitzgerald (12) took, Wei Sing Goh expressed, “I felt good about that ISKL game because I finally played my role on the team.”
The Dalat boys ended up placing first among the four teams that gathered to play quality basketball at ISKL. Although no medals were received this time, each one of our Dalat boys knew that their hard work paid off, but also that they need to work even harder in order to make sure the medal is gold when they do receive one in future tournaments.
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