Basketball: Dedicated to Kelly Sir

I dedicate this post to Kelly Sir for all the hours of practice, all the jokes, all the scoldings, all the warnings of hitting (from outside the court during matches :D), for all the broken chairs during the game, for all the times he fought for us with the referees, for all the winning matches and last but not the least for giving us a passion and not just a game.

So here goes my Basketball journey:

The flood lights were on, score: 28-26, last 2 minutes left: crowd was going crazy with all the slogans and shouts, Amrita had the ball (our captain), Kelly sir was shouting, "pass the ball, don't dribble, pass it to Kokil", I had reached the other court and was screaming for a pass, Amrita heard and passed the ball to me, and I passed it to Kokil, she went in for the shoot and for a second, it was as if the world stood still, everything was in slow motion and then there it was, another score and a long whistle blow announcing : DIS Senior Girls Basketball team had won the CBSE Basketball tournament with final score as 30-26. What a moment it was, we five ran towards each other hugging as if there was no tomorrow, jumping in tandem, screaming our lungs out, then came the rest of the team, crowd and Kelly Sir all rejoicing the winning moment. To add flavor to the win, we beat Jaswant Modern against whom we had lost the finals a year before. It all came together to make the moment absolutely perfect.

It was not a one off thing, basketball has given me numerous such moments to cherish for whole of my life, be it Independence cup at St. Thomas (where we were always runner's up and hoped every year that Welham's doesn't participate :D) or Kashyap Cup at Pestleweed (where we were the winner's for two continuous years and where both of our school's cheer leading team always ended up in verbal fights), or District tournament (where we got to go to Doon school :) and be in the company of some amazing players ;)) or Hilton cup (which was only 5 member team game and tested our stamina to the max.) or CBSE cup at our school (where we always won with an exception of once loosing against JMS). It might sound unbelievable but basketball was so important to our school that before final matches our principle Mrs Mann used to call us inside her house for Prashad and we got treat at President Restaurant on winning. All the wins were celebrated like crazy and loosing meant everyone around literally crying and being upset for hours and hours.

I remember once there was day match during school hours (usually tournament timings are after school) against a Mussourie school (can't recall the name, an all girls school something starting with L). All of us had reached the court and were warming up, suddenly we saw class after class coming out of the academic building (in one straight line and one arm distance:D) towards the court. The scene made me so nervous, all the teachers had come to watch too. Anyway, the game started and suddenly I notice, my class teacher Saxena mam (a nice old lady-hindi teacher) and Shamta mam (social science teacher) shouting things like, "oh god, can't you guys see, number 3 is not been checked, Anshu take her" etc etc. Even though the game was on but for a moment I was confused and smiling. Then came a time out and my smile was gone. Both literally started scolding us as if we hadn't finished our homework :D (teacher's just can't digest that there might be something we would know better of :D). Anyway luckily for us, we won the match and the pride was retained :).

I had started playing basketball at the time when the court was still not cemented and after every vacation, it used have knee length green grasses growing all over. As a solution to it, school used to dig the whole court making it so uneven that it was a rarity of ball coming back to you after a dribble. Gradually we got a cemented court and an amazing coach in the form of Kelly Sir. He made us run for hours, dribble for hours, shoot for ours and ultimately gave us perfect set of boys and girls for a team and what a team it was. Our boys team was simply superb and we were not that bad either ;). We played almost every tournament and won majority of them. Team we had been afraid of, became just another game and list of trophies were added every season. The practice time and match time used to be my best hours of the day and I miss it always. At the end I would just like to mention my amazing team mates : Amrita Shrestha, Amrita Singh, Amrita Gurung, Firfilla, Sanswarang, Kokil, Jasleen, Anuradha Gandhi. And ofcourse how can I forget the other half i.e. the boys team Eman Bose, Mudit, Pal, Bhuppi, Chintu, Moti, Krishad, Sheetal n others. Thank you for always standing by us and especial thanks to Eman bhaiya and Mudit Bhaiya for helping me get over my fear of lay ups :D. Miss you all soooooo much....

Note: Welcome Rahul Nautiyal Bhaiya, who has just joined my small group of followers. Seriously I was surprised and thrilled to see your name there. For readers who don't know him, he was in the senior most batch and one of the smartest guy around in school. Mahesh bhaiya told me a year back that you got married (I hope its correct info. because I am announcing it pretty publically), so Congrats :). Hope you like your junior's writing (if you remember me then it must be as a 5th or 6th class girl :)).