Earlier this year, in April, I was selected to play for England at the Euro Pacé Association Basketball competition. My teammates, my coach’s and I left on the last day of term before the Easter holidays had started, we met at Osterly train station and left for Kings cross station full of excitement and a little scared.
We caught the EuroStar train to France, the journey with the team and coach was so exciting. It had been my first time to France so I was very excited. Once we arrived at our destination, we met up with our host families I wasn’t feel nervous or concerned in any way because they were so friendly and it was a great chance to practice my french!
The next morning we drove to the Basketball competition with our host families and got changed straight into our game kits, following this we started a warm up, we started with some light jogging following some stretches. After that we made some lay ups on both sides of the rim. Coach decided who will be starting and who was going to be sub. I started a sub, although I was disappointed I reminded myself that I would get my time to shine and that the year 8’s had more experience. This advantage also resulted our team getting the advantage of 5 points by half-time lead. When my turn finally came I was like a rocket on the court and made multiple opportunities and shots to my team players.
The next day came so quickly, we were having so much fun as a team and it was exciting to watch all the other games and see the calibre of players. We played our games on Saturday and Sunday with every team watching the finale. The atmosphere was intense and exciting and everyone was cheering. On Monday we got our result and we actually finished 14th out of 28 teams which was the best result for any junior England team.
Jagraj S Sidhu - Soccer Player #U17 🇬🇧🇺🇸 