Final SPHSL Basketball Boys

By D. Stewart

The SPHSL tournament is one of the three main competitions that the Varsity basketball team competes throughout the year. It is composed of a group of international schools in São Paulo such as Graded, Chapel, EAC and PACA. All of the teams play each other at least twice throughout the tournament at their respective home court and the opponent's court. The tournament is extremely competitive with lots of school spirit involved. For this year we had the expectation of reaching the finals once again for the third time in a row, undefeated. Unfortunately, this was not the case. We lost to Chapel on our second game of the season by just two points. This tough loss motivated each and every player to work harder for our mutual goals. Many challenges were faced along the way, with tough games during the entire tournament. It was clearly not as easy as everyone expected to be. Even though many challenges were faced, nothing changed the mindset and dedication from the players in achieving their goals. 

This year, the final was once again in our home court, in the past 4 finals 3 of them were played at St Paul’s, the game was against EAC, the final stretch was vital; lots of mental and physical preparation was required to play this game as hard as possible. This final match was filled with emotion as we were able to become three times in a row SPHSL champions, with a satisfying result of 48 x 32. It was also a very emotional game for 6 players, as it was our final game representing the school, and being able to bring back such a positive result for one last time was a perfect way to finish with their high school careers.