Sunday Boarding Trip: Basketball

Date: Monday 21 March 2011

Basketball – Guildford Heat vs. Glasgow Rocks

On Sunday 20^th March Mr Jones, Mr Brewer and a group of the boarding community’s basketball fanatics travelled to see the Guildford Heat at home against the Glasgow Rocks. This year’s BBL Trophy Runners-up, the Heat, were a thrilling picture of professional basketball and an inspiring example to our own would-be basketballers.

Our band of enthusiastic amateurs set off at midday and made it to the venue with time to spare before the teams came out to warm up. With Sky Sports filming the game and a huge amount of home support, by the time the Heat made their entrance the atmosphere was incredible and our boarders were soon swept up in the clapping, chanting and stomping that was led by mascot ‘Scorcher’.

The game itself was compelling; a clearly dominant home team, buoyed up by their vocal fans, nevertheless having to respect their opponents’ skill. There was even opportunity for St Ed’s to get on to the court – Pakco entered a free-throw competition at half-time, doing us proud with a tidy basket and Jackson and Edwin were called up during a fourth quarter time-out to try and score from the centre line. Both boys performed admirably under the pressure of a capacity crowd and Jackson came within an inch of winning a season ticket when his ball just clipped the rim and bounced away.

Quite rightly, the Heat triumphed with a comfortable margin and in our post-match analysis on the coach home Ricky Ng opined that the Rocks had some good players but were not a good ‘team’, whereas Heat stars (and newly appointed St Ed’s heroes) Mike Martin and Tayo Ogedengbe were excellent parts of a cohesive unit.

A special thank you must go to the Heat’s club who couldn’t have made us feel more welcome: from seeing our School’s name up in lights to being asked to join in with on one of the entertaining time-out activities, the boarders were treated every bit as well as the Heat’s own loyal fans – of which there were many. I think the fact that the boarders have been talking to other pupil’s about ‘our’ win against the Rocks is a good enough reason to start planning a return trip, as well as an indication that we might need a bigger coach!

Mr Brewer