SMGS U16 Girls Basketballers heading for All Irelands

🏀 The U16 Girls Basketball team had their All Ireland play off on Tuesday. The girls first played St. Brigids Killarney. The girls played well and had many scoring chances. However, their shoots were a little off and unfortunately lost by 6 points. Next, St. Brigids played Our Ladys Bower, Athlone, in which Athlone won. It was all down to the last match, SMGS vs Athlone.

We knew going into the match against Athlone we needed to win by 14 points in order to qualify. The first quarter went well with a winning start of 14 - 10. However, in the second quarter the gap reduced to 21 - 18. At half time, we had a team talk. For the final two quarters we had to increase the gap to 14 points. ⛹️‍♀️

The girls played well on offense but defensive strategies were lacking. As a result, the gap was 5 points by the end of the third quarter. Our challenge was to increase the lead by another 9 points. The girls worked together as a team, with fast passing on offense and great pressure applied on defense. With some time outs for strategic plays, the girls scored basket after basket, with all 5 players scoring!! 👏 Final score 52 - 33. 

🏀All Ireland stages - here we come!! 🏀