There are 4 quarters in a Basketball game!

The European School 53, St. Clare's, Oxford 18

Like all good athletes the St. Clare's Girls' team suffered from serious nerves and without the calming presence of captain Mia Kraus, our girls just had a very shaky start. They faced the current Champions, the European School. Both teams had unbeaten records, so this was a very important game for both teams.

The European School proved to be a very aggressive defensive team, just like St Clare's has been throughout the season. The St Clare's coaching team had planned to use the game as a training session, although it would have been “nice” to win the game. However, it was more important for the team to face a tough squad without Mia.

St. Clare's had a pretty poor start, unable to cope with the full court pressure applied by European School, making ill advised passes, not defending aggressively enough and taking very few shots. The European School took a healthy 17-0 first quarter lead. In the second quarter St Clare's began to defend the ball better, but the defensive rotation was too slow and European School was able to find the open player, as well as out rebounding our girls. Having said that more shots were attempted and Magda scored St. Clare's first points. The half ended 35-2 to European School.

During the half time the Coaches decided to make some minor changes and urged the players to really push hard and take the game to European School. In the third quarter St Clare's ensured the defensive rotation was in place, all players boxed out and there was an immediate change in the game, suddenly the European School did not look as comfortable or even in control anymore as St Clare's pounded and hounded the ball, closed all possible passes and took the rebounds. Unfortunately the scoring for St Clare's remained extremely low, but they stopped the European School scoring avalanche.

In the fourth quarter, St. Clare's maintained the pressure and managed to score a few more baskets, unfortunately the first half of the game gave the European School a well earned victory, but St Clare's learnt a valuable lesson … they can face and compete at a high level with anybody and do a terrific job, also games are 4 quarters!

It is worth mentioning that regardless of how the game was going the girls were relentless, they never gave up and did not stop trying.

Scorers:
Aska - 4 pts
Lena F - 6 pts
Kathryn - 2 pts
Magda - 4 pts
Sofia - 2 pts
Alessia - 0 pts
Yu - 0 pts
Katarina - 0 pts
Patrycja - 0 pts

Match report by Coach Franky Marulanda

March