ISSEA Championship

From Wednesday afternoon to late Saturday night, I have been trapped in Mr. Quinet’s office working on the website uploads for the ISSEA tournament pictures, scores, and standings. Basketball has always been a favorite sport of mine to watch, so I was thrilled to be able to help out with the biggest high school tournament in Africa, even if it meant hours of tedious work. Over the past four days, I have watched more basketball than I ever had in all my previous years combined. I’ve been caught in the tumultuous river of emotions accompanying such an event; swept up in the cheering, the crying, the celebrating, the eating, and the screaming.

The ISSEA staff had to work together closely so that all the operations would run smoothly. The other schools were counting on us to provide a well-run tournament. Communication was key. We set up a system of shifts of different Photography Club members assigned to different games, and once they got six perfect shots, they would report to me. All the pictures went onto this website after being modified and resized:

http://www.isk.ac.ke/page.cfm?p=421

It was a difficult job for all of us. Through the hours of tireless working, we would bring each other snacks, words of encouragement, instructions, and results from various games. We depended on each other.

I had never worked with HTML coding before. I appreciated the introduction to how websites worked. I hope I can develop it further, as website creation is an important facet of most modern-day business structures.

I also learned about the inner-workings of basketball. I had had vague ideas before about the rules (mostly me asking things like “Wait, you can’t run with the ball, right?”), but never before had I witnessed the depth of the spirit, hard work, and dedication that each player contributes to make a team work as a whole. It’s a delicate formula. The fans have to be cheering just right, the coaches have to be advising perfectly, every player has to communicate with every other player. And at the end of the game, both sides have to reconcile their victory or loss and practice good sportsmanship. I think we all have a lot to learn from basketball.