Throughout the season the big talk of Irish Basketball has been the National Cup. To many people this tournament is bigger than the entire season. My team is 3-7 , therefore winning the cup would reflect into a successful season despite our record.
Leading up to the cup semis I was a little nervous. I really haven’t played to my potential all season despite a few games but this was the time that I needed to show my talents especially if my team was going to win.
Many scholars came up to visit for the week and it was nice seeing Gareth and Deirdre the CEO’s of Sport Changes Life especially since I wasn’t able to make it to Belfast for thanksgiving.
My friend Mckayla came to visit from the states which was awesome, she brought a little bit of home to Ireland.
The cup game was thrilling and exciting as I battled against two of my favorites, Ashley and Meredith. It was a great game down to each loose ball and bad foul call lol.
One of my teammates went down with an ankle injury in the first half and I knew from then I had to step up despite my poor shooting of starting the game of 0-7 (all mid range jump shots by the way) ..I know terrible.
But, preserved through that and found my groove offensively by playing intense defense. Throughout the game I kept thinking “Don’t Stop” . If I’m tired don’t stop, if I turn the ball over don’t stop passing, if I miss a shot, don’t stop shooting. I knew that if I kept going through these adverse moments then we would win.
The last 2 minutes of the game my body flat out said “Sis you need to chill” , I know that because I caught a severe cramp at the end of the game. Where I clearly went over the back for a rebound and played on the court for about 20 mins until the trainer came over.
Mind you I was in excruciating pain and I felt a knot roll from my calf down to my Achilles and back up again. As I’m laying on the ground the trainer is trying to aggressively relax the muscles as my body was not responding to that. I was then carried off the court with my fingers crossed and high faith that my team will carry on without me and squeeze out the W!
And they did! This is the second semi final win in the last 2 years and hopefully we can get the W against killister next weekend in Dublin and become National Cup CHAMPIONS!!!!!
