‘Independent Schools Basketball Tournament’ 2012

On Saturday the 14^th of September, the Senior Wellington College basketball team took part in the ‘Independent Schools Basketball Tournament’ which is hosted every year in our very own sports hall. This year saw eight teams take part including Bradfield, Charterhouse, Winchester, Eton, BWS, Stowe and Pangbourne. Expectations were high following a dramatic victory in the last few seconds of last year’s final and with that in mind, the starting five of Tom Butler, Alex Van Joest, Paolo Lippi, Farhad Jokhi (captain) and Jack Gault (vice-captain) stepped onto the court in their first match against Charterhouse, renowned for their speed and athleticism. Wellington came bursting through the gates and finished the first half of the game 21-2 following some powerful and consistent play by Tom Butler and Alex Van Joest, the pace of Farhad Jokhi also provided an option as he carved up the Charterhouse defence to get to the hoop. Wellington sailed through the second half to take a comfortable victory 29-8.

The following game saw Wellington take on local rivals Bradfield, the team, fuelled with enthusiasm following their prior victory once again poured everything into this game as they battled against a strong defensive side. The end result was decided by the concluding minutes which saw Bradfield fighting desperately to hold on to a one point advantage. Wellington did all they possibly could but it was simply not enough as Bradfield finished the game two points ahead.

The final match of the group stages was a showdown between Wellington and Winchester, a team whose coach will always describe as ‘no-where near as good as last year’s team’ but unfortunately for us, this is rarely the case. Emotions were riding high with the knowledge that this game had to be won if we wanted to reach the semi-finals. The usual team began the game and got off to a decent start but Winchester had no intention of backing down lightly, and to their credit they were able to certainly tire out the Wellington defence. Sadly, we found ourselves in a similar situation to the previous game except this time we were the ones nursing a two point lead; luckily we managed to hold on thanks to a game-saving block in the dying seconds by Alex Van Joest which earned him great cheers from the surrounding spectators.

Given a rare break, Wellington were able to contemplate their semi-final game against BWS, arguably the favourites of the tournament right from the start. An unusually tall team including a player with the ability to slam dunk noticeably left Wellington feeling shaky from the start. Pressurised defence right from the tip-off saw some costly turnovers by Wellington but through hard-grit determination and perseverance we were able to hold our own and at half-time we trailed by a mere two points. However the second half saw a similar story with some costly missed shots by Wellington as well as some free-throws that we should have made, the team was forced to tactically foul BWS in order to retain possession but this was all too little too late and we lost to the better team by four points.

At this point, feeling slightly down-hearted we moved on to the 3^rd/4^th place playoff which saw us playing against Stowe. Both coaches thought it only fair to give the second string players a game and with a bit of help from the first five, Wellington managed a one point victory and secured third place.

BWS went on to win the final vs Bradfield but all in all, everyone enjoyed a great afternoon of basketball and Wellington will hope to take the trophy next season. Special mention must go to the captain Farhad Jokhi who kept the team motivated right from the start as well as the organiser of the tournament, Mr Wilson for creating a great afternoon of competition.