The Easter weekend was a busy weekend for the Club as the first ever Under 14 Celtic Challenge was held at the Centre for Sports and Exercise in Edinburgh. Over the weekend we hosted over 120 players with 4 girls' teams playing on Saturday and 4 boys' teams on the Sunday. The spectators were treated to a feast of basketball and showed their appreciation at every opportunity and its safe to say the local Edinburgh economy benefitted from the shopping the Irish visitors managed to fit in!
The story of the tournament starts way back in December when we were approached by Brendan with a request for his regional Irish team North East Knights to play our under 14 boys and girls. This was quickly expanded into a project for our Youth Leaders to learn more about event management by organising a tournament. We were hugely indebted to Kara Gillies for her leadership on this project as she led the Youth Leaders through the considerable task of organising and running a 2 day tournament. From applying for funding, designing the tournament programme, sourcing the table officials and referees, sourcing the winners' medals and the MVP prizes, organising the tuck shop and raffle, scheduling the running order and liaising with the teams on the day, the Youth Leaders did an outstanding job as anyone who attended the tournament will agree. We were delighted to receive financial support from the City of Edinburgh Council through their Active Edinburgh Physical Activity and Sports Event funding.
The tournament started on the Saturday bright and early with lots of frentic activity going on in the background dressing the hall and making sure everyone knew what they were doing. As the tournament was also being used to help further the experience of some of our newly qualified referees, there was a pre-tournament briefing and support throughout the day from Chris Hope. As the teams started to arrive they were met by their nominated Team Liaison who made sure they all knew where to get changed, where the water fountains and the tuck shop were and issued their schedule and programmes. The tournament was then opened by our chairperson Amy Morgan and the action got underway. It soon became apparent that the visiting Irish team were very strong and would be the team to beat. Kats played extremely well in their opening game against Wolves and looked as if they were going to open with a win but unfortunately just lost out at the end, they then fought hard against the Irish who were just too strong. Kats finished in style with a win over Boroughmuir Blaze. So North East Knights were crowned the U14 Celtic Challenge winners, Dave Evans of basketballscotland selected Kate Shannon of North East Knights as the tournament MVP and presented her with a basketball.
On the Sunday we started all over again with the boys' teams this time. Chris Hope and John Day were in attendance to help out with the new referees and once again Amy welcomed the teams to the tournament and we got underway. The first games showed that these teams were going to be hard to separate as they were very evenly matched. The Kings boys first game against West Lothian Wolves was a thrilling affair which went to overtime and then golden basket and in the process threatened to give the tournament organisers a heart attack as they saw their schedule start to slip alarmingly already! Kings managed to get the golden basket and on the other court Blaze just managed to get the win over the North East Knights. Next up Kings and Knights faced off against each other with another exciting game that perhaps saw the effects of the first game tell in the Kings boys legs as they narrowly lost to Knights. With Blaze getting the win over Wolves it was still all to play for in the last games with the tournament organisers realising we could potentially be looking at a 3 way tie! Unfortunately for Kings it wasn't to be as they just couldn't summon enough energy beat Blaze and Blaze ran out the tournament winners. Juan Berenguer of Blaze was selected for the MVP in what must have been a difficult decision for Dave Evans as there were so many contenders across all the teams. All that remained was to draw the raffle and thank everyone for their support and wish our visitors a safe journey home across the Irish sea.
This tournament couldn't have happened without all the hard work of the following people and we give them our heartfelt thanks :
We also need to thank the following people :
Gillian and Mike Wingate, for all their outstanding work in the Tuck Shop
Yvonne Anderson and Liz Simpson for baking
Debbie Marshall for providing first aid on both days
All our Table Officials and referees
Mariann Miklosik, Chris Hope and John Day for all their help with the referees
All the staff at CSE for their help over the two days
Paul Storie for his help with designing and producing the programmes
Standard Life for printing the programmes
Camera Obsura, Butterfly and Insect World and Five Guys for donating raffle prizes
basketballscotland for donating the MVP prizes
City of Edinburgh Council for part funding the event
Paul Storie and Feilim Mackle for their photography skills on the day
All our amazing Club members who volunteered to help on the day
North East Knights, West Lothian Wolves, Boroughmuir Blaze and our U14 players and coaches for making it such a brilliant spectator event.
