Evidence: I am the 3rd person from the right.

ISSO is a national sports tournament in India that occurs every year. This year, I was selected for the age group of under 19 for basketball. Within this tournament, there were a wide variety of experiences that strengthened my skills, taught me lessons, and helped me to connect with my teammates.

LO1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

At the tournament, our team had to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each team member in order to use them accordingly. My strengths were passing, defense and midrange shooting, so I was placed in the position of shooting guard/point guard. I also had to develop areas for growth in my game, so I identified a need for more rebounding capabilities and defense against larger opponents. Throughout the tournament, I was constantly analyzing my previous game and what I could improve, then making changes and adapting in the next game.

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills

Many challenges were undertaken which improved my skills. While playing the games, we ran into many tough opponents and had to adapt and improve in order to score points against them. The teams we went against were truly skilled and they were more physically capable than us. Thus, inn order to make any sort of scoring, we had to work on our strategy and focus on specific skills that we needed to improve. This includes the skills of shooting in the midrange area, sharp passing, and tight handles. By facing these challenges, our skills developed at a highly accelerated rate, gaining real-world experience against tougher opponents than our usual peers.

LO4: Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience

Getting into the ISSO team and then playing well was a huge commitment from my side. It took a lot of perseverance through challenges and being committed to playing well. I worked extremely hard to receive this opportunity to play on such a huge platform, and eventually it paid off as I was able to perform in the tournament. It was also an extreme commitment in terms of time and money, as we had to sacrifice tens of thousands of rupees and over a week of our school in order to attend this event. Despite the extreme challenges that we faced during the tournament, our team kept our morale up and persevered. By doing so, we were able to play much better even though we had just lost, enabling us to win the next game.

LO5: Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively

As a team game, basketball requires a huge amount of collaboration not only between teammates but their coaches as well. During the tournament, we had to work collaboratively throughout in order to have a coordinated attack and defense. We would run plays and strategies depending on the other team’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, one team had poor perimeter defense, so we decided to take more three-pointers, which eventually worked out for us. By communicating on defense, we could cover for variabilities that may have appeared from the other team’s plays, which allowed us to prevent extra points from being scored.