Congratulations to our Junior NBA basketball team who put in a great performance in the Junior NBA playoff round last Friday at Tynecastle High School.
Having qualified for the playoffs following a series of matches over a 5 week period, our team produced an outstanding performance to win their playoff match against the Warriors basketball club. Having lost to the Warriors on two previous occasions, and trailing at the end of each of the first three quarters, and despite missing some players due to absence, the pupils performed beyond all expectations to win a thrilling game by a two point margin and progress to the semi finals.
Shooting in our semi final with Warriors.
In the semi finals, we lost out deservedly to our friends from Sciennes Primary School – however, our pupils can be very proud of their battling performance against the overall winners of the competition. The young people from Preston Street and Sciennes enjoy a friendly relationship and it was great to see children from both schools showing a great sporting attitude towards each other before, during and after the game. We even posed for a joint picture at the end of our match!
Pupils from Preston Street and Sciennes together after their game.
To finish in the top four of a competition involving ten schools and clubs is a great achievement and we are very proud of our team, who fought hard every week, playing in most cases against much larger schools. More importantly, they showed excellent behaviour throughout the term, particularly when travelling there and back by public transport on Friday afternoons.
A number of our pupils are in P6 and will have another opportunity next year – for those who are in P7, we are sure they will continue their basketball journey at high school and beyond.
Many thanks to West Edinburgh Warriors for hosting the competition and giving our young people this fantastic opportunity. Thanks also to Mr MacLean for taking the pupils each week, and to our various basketball club coaches from Blaze for building our pupils’ confidence to enable them to play at this level.
Most of all, thanks to our excellent group of young people:
P6 – Kareem, Osman, Jamie S, Jamie R
P7 – Ava, Yaya, Rahaf, Leo, Aris, Caleb, Meha
Here are some pictures from the two playoff games:
