basketball star Daniel Chambers writes about his trip to Dublin.
20th February 2017
Recently I went on Radio Newark to update everyone on my progress with my basketball. I explained that I was going on tour to Ireland with the Nottinghamshire County Squad. A few days before the trip I started to feel ill. I was very unhappy about this because I had been looking forward to this tour for a long time. However, throughout the tour I kept a positive mental attitude and tried my hardest. On the first day we had training at 10am. Afterwards, we caught a mini-bus to our first game. It was against the Liffey Celtics U12s team. We beat them by 50 points. My teammates worked extremely hard through our games. Also my coach Austin Grant did an amazing job of keeping us energised and ready to play. Next we headed off to the second game. It was going to be difficult as the team was U14s. We concentrated hard throughout. However our first half we had only scored 5 points. The opposition (Liffey Celtics U14s) were much taller and stronger. But in the second half we took care with the ball better and scored 10 points. We didn’t have a great game and ended up losing by 30, but we worked hard and kept trying.
On the second day, we had breakfast at 8:30am, then rested until 11am. The game was at 12 noon so we had to walk to the gym where we were playing. We were going up against the undefeated team Templeogue. They were a very strong team and we lost by only 15 points, and worked hard again. During the game we were quite sloppy and slow. So we knew next game we had to pick up the intensity. Next game was a couple of hours away so we relaxed and ate food. We played the Dublin Lions who had come over to our court last year. They had improved quite a lot. The game started, my throat was throbbing with pain because of my illness. We started the game fast gaining a 10 point lead but then we fell apart and the game was tied. We continued to work hard throughout the game. The lead went back and forth, and we went into overtime because we tied at the end of the game 32-32. They scored 4 points right away. Then we picked our defence up. The last minute was tied at 39-39. In that period of time I grabbed 5 clutch rebounds! Which led to a made free throw to take a one point lead. I grabbed another rebound and sprinted up the court as fast as I could and made an “and-one”. Unfortunately the refs didn’t call the foul. The lead grew to 3 points. The score stood at 39-42. After I scored, the Lions pushed the ball up the court quickly. I was the only person back on defence and got a game-saving block on one of their players. I blocked the shot and held the ball. I was fouled. Our Coach called a timeout. We ran a play called stack which is where everyone builds a ‘wall’ then set screens or cuts to the basket. The play didn’t go as planned but we still got the ball in. The game ended at a 39-42 win to us! Overall the tour was one of the most memorable moments of my life. I hope to have the opportunity to do something like it again.
Thanks, Dan.