This weekend PJB girls spent the weekend in Kigali for the 15th annual Gisembe International Basketball Tournament. We took a team of 12 girls who are part of the Elite PJB team along with three coaches. It was a great opportunity for the girls to represent PJB as well as the DRC as a country in the international tournament.
We left early Friday morning from Goma to travel to Kigali. On Friday we were set to play APR, the Rwandan National team at 4 PM. We arrived in Kigali at Amahoro stadium (the national stadium) at about 1:30 PM, which gave us enough time for a pre-game meal and enough time to rest and focus for the game. The tournament began at 2 PM with a game between fellow Congolese team, Goma Bulls (the PJB Elite men’s rivals) and a youth Rwandan team. I believe that it is always good to be a tournament because as you are preparing for your own match you can relax and watch a different match. As a player this always got me pumped for the game and helped me focus. As a coach I also find that I like to watch a game before my team plays a game. Through watching a game you can really think through basketball and see things that you want to do or you want to avoid when you get the chance to play. Both as a player and as a coach I would say that almost as important as playing basketball, watching basketball is essential to success.
Anyway, our game began at about 5:30 PM, which was no surprise that Rwandan time is the same as Congolese time. We had to start the match short 3 girls who were suspended for being late. Our star point guard lost her starting job and was suspended for a quarter for being late, and two other key reserves missed the game for showing up late to travel in the morning. We won the tip and scored on our first possession of the game, 2-0 PJB. It was a great feeling to hold a lead against APR, which is a powerhouse in East Africa sports. The feeling was short lived though as we finished the first quarter losing 34-2. The girls were great though as they did not lose spirit, and as the second quarter began the team turned around, with the starting point guard being able to play, and we went into halftime 42-10. After losing the first quarter by 32 points, we lost the second only by 10. The third quarter was our best quarter as our girls came out of half time no longer scared of the older, bigger, stronger and faster APR team, and played some inspired basketball. After the 3rd quarter the score was 51-15, which meant we only lost the quarter 9-5. The final score of the game was somewhere around 78-17, because we used the 4th quarter to rest our starters for the game the next day.
Though we got our butts kicked, it was great to see the girls were not discouraged, and us three coaches couldn’t have been more proud. We were playing with a team who’s average age is about 16 years old, and the APR starters had almost 10 years of experience playing together. After the first quarter I told the girls to play quarters, and try to win quarters instead of the game, like how I gave the game recap. They really bought into that idea, and I think that by doing this they saw that they improved over the course of the game, and that meant that they were successful. It was awesome to see young girls buying into a healthy view of success whereas most teenage girls would be devastated after a 60-point loss.
The next day wasn’t as good as first day in a basketball sense. We played the next game away from Amahoro Stadium (which was the main site for the tournament) at an outdoor court known as Rafiki Club. On Saturday we played RUN (Rwanda University National), which looked to be a match that we had a chance to win during warm-ups. Again we were playing out of our league as we were playing a University team of grown women with a group of young teenagers. The first quarter we played up to average for us, with our big girl Grace (6’0” 15 year old forward) playing really well both offensively and cleaning up the defensive glass. At the end of the first we were down 13-11 though. After that, our girls looked slow and sluggish and we ended up playing very ugly the rest of the game and lost 48-22, a pretty bad blowout. I know exactly what happened and it is hard to blame the girls.
The loss was due to a lack of maturity, but it served the girls a good lesson. On Friday night some pounding waked me up from bed at 1:00AM on my wall from the room next door. I went to the room and found the girls in the room wide-awake, laughing and talking. I then went to all the rest of the girl’s rooms, and all of them were awake, listening to music, talking and laughing. I got all of them in to bed, but I know they didn’t go to sleep. Then in the morning all the girls washing their uniforms for the game in the afternoon waked me up at 6:00 AM. This means that the girls got less than 5 hours of sleep, and you could see it in the game on Saturday.
I can’t blame them. I was the same way in high school. When you are in a different country/city and you are away from home with your friends you just want to live up every second. I remember all the APAC tournaments where we would fly home on Sunday completely exhausted, not just from all the games (and Championships if you played during my career at SFS J) but also because we would stay up late at night with all of our friends. Tournaments are exciting and a great time for team bonding, and going to Kigali for the Gisembe tournament was a treat for the girls, but more importantly it was another step for PJB in developing our reputation.
Our girls represented PJB and DRC in a great way I feel, and I was even told multiple times about the upside of our team. I think that the people at the tournament were impressed with what we had even though we were blown out twice. Success goes way deeper than scores and statistics, it is determined by spirit and heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment