Republic Polytechnic Women's Basketball Team 4th
at ISIBL Tournament 2004
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Playing for
the 3rd and 4th position in the
International School Invitational Basketball
League (ISIBL) tournament, the RP Women
Basketball Team played our first consolation
finals on 16th December 2004 at the Overseas
Family School (OFS). The girls played a
total of 8 matches in the ISIBL before
reaching the consolation finals. Under the
watchful eyes of more than 250 spectators,
the OFS fans displayed strong support for
their home team with beat of drums and
continuous chanting of “OFS! OFS!...”.
The game
started with RP’s Hazel Tang scoring the
first basket. OFS then tightened their
defense which caused our attack to hold back
a little. With the home team catching up on
score, one would describe the match as a
close and intense encounter of strategy and
speed. OFS continued to score with their
quick offenses that ended the 1st quarter
with a 10 – 4 scoreline.
The coach
decided to deploy Michelle Chiang, RP
Sportswoman 2004 into the 2nd quarter. His
tactic was rewarded with Michelle coming off
the reserve bench and causing defensive
errors for the opponents. The team defenses
tightened with gleam of hope of a RP
comeback. Squeena Ong scored with a lay-up
with Michelle running off a fastbreak
scoring an easy two, the score was 13 – 10
in the 2nd quarter.
The crowd roared on and was giving massive
morale support to the home team. Tension starts
to set into team RP and our defensive formation
was disrupted with lost of concentration. OFS
continued to build on the spiritual support and
came with waves of attacks against the RP team.
Mistakes were made and increase of turnovers and
missed layups soon followed suite. “Our shots
simply wouldn’t go in” exclaimed Man Ping who
incidentally accumulated a total of 5 personal
fouls and was fouled out. The match turned
dramatic with a 21 – 10 lead over the RP team.
Full court press was utilized during the last
quarter. Michelle scored two penalty shots
after being fouled by an opposing player. OFS
continued to attack at full force in the deployment
of a half court man to man offense. Ending
the game with a bang after Caroline Teo missed
the penalty shots, with the final score at
28 -12.
RP was ranked 4th position in ISIBL 2004,
senior girls division 1. ISIBL was a tough
tournament with numerous encounters with our
womens team losing on height advantages, however
this experience of playing in an international
tournament does inspire us to do better next
year. The
team aim to do better in our upcoming Intervarsity
Polytechnic games, knowing that we can be a
dark horse amongst participants.
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