Soon after arriving in Bogota, Colombia, my new coaching assignment was to be assisting the high school boys basketball program. Being in the assistant coach position, under the experienced head coach Adam Kastner, is a role that I would embrace and continually learn from. 

As the season progressed, I became more in touch with the culture of our school and our high school basketball program. Our first tournament of the season was in Medellin, Colombia, hosted by Columbus International School. This tournament was called Binationals. Binationals is a tournament comprised of schools in Colombia affiliated with the Association of American Schools of South America (AASSA). Sports taking place at Binationals include softball, soccer, volleyball and basketball. Awards were provided for individual sports as well as an overall cup for the school that accumulated the most points by placing in each sport. 

Under the intensity of Coach Kastner and our players ability to work as one team, the tournament was easy sailing until our last game; the championship. Columbus International School was a fierce competitor with many athletic players. The opposing coach made subtle adjustments to disrupt our teams' tempo of the game. In the end, by playing not only team defense but sharing the ball on offense to create easy opportunities for scoring; our team succeeded. This championship victory not only brought our team the trophy, but sealed our school goal of obtaining the overall cup for CNG. Go Condors!

​Hard work and working as a team pays off. Our focus during this season was not to earn the Yangon Athletic Conference HS basketball championship; our mission was to improve every single practice and game. Some regular season games were close and some were won by a large margin. We will lose three very impressive seniors next year which were amazing leaders on our team. Luckily we have a couple Juniors, Sophomores and many Freshmen that will step up for a very competitive team in the years to come. Thank you ISM Dragons for an amazing season! 

Determining the difference between your 13th and 12th player on a roster can be very difficult. A couple days ago I had to make a final cut for our varsity basketball team at ISM. Many students are working just as hard as the other but have slight differences which will influence the coaching staffs selection of the team. Even though we told the students multiple times that they will be successful on JV or Varsity we noticed some heartbreak after the final cut. NFHS has a great article on principles behind selecting a team. Take a look! 

Thank you to the British School of Phuket for hosting such and amazing basketball tournament. November 3-6 the our ISM Dragons competed in the tournament against 5 very strong teams. This was the first international basketball trip for ISM. The experience was much needed for our players. A young team soon realized they had to play the next level defense to compete close with much larger opponents. A huge thanks to Jeff (AD) and Jamie (tournament organizer) for inviting us to the tournament and running a perfect event. 

http://www.bisphuket.ac.th/2016-breakers-cup/