IST Basketball team – First game

International School of Tallinn has recently moved into a new building, the diploma program 2 student Torm Helde saw this as an opportunity to create a school basketball team since the school now has its very own court and equipment. Torm started asking students from MYP 4 to Dp 2 to join the basketball team, which he was very successful in as many students throughout the school joined without hesitation. The basketball club had set practices every Friday, but for Torm and the other club members, this wasn’t enough.

After practicing for a couple of weeks with the team, Torm had some very exciting news, he had managed to set up a friendly game with the International School of Audentes. This was great news for the whole team but also very daunting since the team had little to no match experience and Audentes basketball team was seen as one of the best in the whole country of Estonia. But the team did not give up as led by Torm´s charisma they had no doubt the game would end in their victory. The match was set to be in late January, the 9th of January, so with no time to waste the team was on the court practicing constantly.

As the game was only a couple of days away. Torm had to make the choice of who would make the starting 5. Aside from himself, he already knew his younger brother Karm Helde would be in the team as well as his teammates Grischa and Truls, but who would be the 5th man?

After trying many different combinations, he finally came to the conclusion that it would either be Misha or Mark who would fill in for the remaining spot on the team. However, only a week before the game, a new student enrolled in the school, Ensi Põdra. Ensi was a natural at the game, he grew up in the US playing basketball and despite his short height ended up taking the 5th spot on the team.

When the day of the game finally came everyone was so excited for the game they couldn’t sit still, but the excitement didn’t last long. The game ended in a devastating loss for IST and a crushing victory for Audentes, even though it was just a friendly game, the players didn’t take it well. 

Truls Gratschew