God's Plans

Ruben Nyul

This week we made Dalat basketball history. We were the first team in Dalat men’s basketball to ever place at an ACSC tournament. It all started at the YISS campus in Seoul, South Korea. The first day, when we arrived, was about negative two degrees Celsius. I love the cold weather, so this trip could have not been any better. The second day was when the hard competition began; we played Grace International School and Faith Academy.

Starting off against Grace, we played an ultimately perfect first three quarters but, unfortunately, let the game go in the fourth and ended up losing the game by ten points. Then against Faith Academy, we started off on the right foot, leading by more than fifteen points. Unfortunately, they cut the lead in absolutely no time, and we ended up losing by seven points. Regardless of those two losses, Eddy Seong’s (11) uncle took us out to the best Korean BBQ I have ever eaten in my life. We had taken two losses on the court, but one very big win off the court.

Thursday, we played against a new school from Seoul called APIS, which stands for Asia Pacific International School. We played a very good game, but somehow, we ended up losing that game by two points, which meant that we would drop down to the last place in our group pool play. That also meant that we would have to then face the defending champions, St. Paul, in the elimination rounds. However, something happened that absolutely nobody saw coming, which is why the title is ‘God’s Plan.’ A team had to forfeit their three wins because they were playing an ineligible player according to their school rules, which meant that we have that as a win and they would automatically drop down to the last place with a record of 0-3. We then had a record of 1-2, which meant that instead of playing the big bad defending champions we would play Morrison Academy. We got so much energy from knowing that God had a plan for us.

We also played that song by the rap artist, Drake. That next day, we were finally victorious at a score of 65-60. Although, we then lost to Grace once again, which meant that we played Faith Academy again for the 4th place game. And if we won, we would play YISS for the 3rd place game. We beat Faith by a score of 49-40, which meant we were about to play the home team in front of their home crowd for a spot in the semi-finals and a third-place finisher medal.

What a game of ups and downs it was. Dalat was down 44-42 with six seconds to go when Aaron Worten (11) made a clutch layup to tie the game and sent it to overtime. We were leading by two points with fourteen seconds remaining, and once again, he hit another marvelous layup to make it a two-possession game and close it out. Worton said, “I felt like it was a movie, such a great finish.”

We had just clinched a top-three finish, and it meant a lot to all of the team because we knew we had made history. No Dalat men’s varsity basketball team had ever placed at ACSC.