Sea Dragons Shine at Chang’An Basketball Cup

For the 2nd consecutive year we traveled to Xi’an for the prestigious Chang’An Cup tournament. We were delighted to be represented in both the boys and girls sections that was the biggest Chang’An Cup event yet, with 12 boys teams and 10 girls teams. 

The boys team were put in a very challenging section that contained XIS and KCIS who would go on to contest the tournament final. Our Sea Dragons but up strong performances against both teams, but ended up on the losing side in both. However, a victory over JDFZ FireWolves secured qualification for the Quarter-Finals, where we met Maple Leaf Xi’an. The Sea Dragons were eliminated in the last 8 against the team that would eventually finish the tournament in 3rd place. This left the 5th-8th place section on the final day. A chance to play for 5th place slipped through our fingers with an agonizing 1-point defeat against Hanova. However, the Sea Dragons recovered from this setback to secure 7th place with an excellent victory over XISU Panthers. Congratulations to Leo Hu who was nominated for the tournament All-Star team.

In the girls section, our participation in the tournament was all about growth and the experience of being in a competitive setting. In their opening game the girls fought gamely against KangChiao before a narrow defeat against GXYZ. There was improvement and more points scored from game to game with an extremely tense tie with XIS ensuring that the girls qualified for the “play-in” game for the right to play in the semi-finals. In this play-in fixture the Sea Dragons came up against 2-time reigning champions Hanova. The girls put in a fantastically brave display amassing 16 points before eventually losing to the team that would again go on to win the tournament. This left us up against host school XLIS for the opportunity to finish in 5th place. However, this proved a game too far for our girls team. Congratulations to Candy Guan for being nominated for the tournament All-Star team and to the girls team who were voted as “Most Sporting Team” by the other participating schools.

^{Most Sporting Team}

A massive thank you to coaches Mr. Flanagan, Mr. Iwanyshyn, Mr. Singleton and Ms. Dlamini for their outstanding support of our Sea Dragons teams. We are looking forward to ACAMIS in Shanghai next month.

Written by: Mr. Paul Robinson
Pictures credit: XLIS