Football

This past week during practice we have been practicing this new defensive covering technique. I have been talking with my other captain and we have been Planning and Initiating the types of plays to be used during our matches so that we are well prepared for our final season SAISA Tournament. 

This year we have a really strong team. Everyone on our starting squad has been playing football for a long time and we have been playing together for a while so we understand each other and our playing techniques. All of us have a really good feeling about placing in our final tournament. 

Every week on Friday we have practice games. We play these games so that we get maximum practice and opportunities to play against people other than us. So far we have played three matches and won all three. We have scored 15 goals in these three matches: Nikita- 5, Devin-4, Me-3, John-2 and Christian-1. This just shows how strong our forwards and midfielders are. We have only conceded 6 goals to the opposition. This ratio shows us that our defense is also very strong. HOWEVER, there are still things that we need to work on such as our covering and man marking. We need to Develop these Skills so that when it comes time to perform at SAISA, we will be the most prepared and best team out there. 

SOS Service Meet: Swimming

The children from the SOS Children's orphanage are still coming to our school every Thursday. Us service members are still engaging with the Issue of Global Importance of the orphans around the world. Our goals are still the same, we are creating elder sibling bonds with the children so that they feel like they have a family outside of the orphanage.

Every week we complete activities with the kids to help them better develop their English. This helps me to Develop New Skills because I am not a Sinhalese speaker so it is hard for me to communicate with these kids. But I am managing and it is really fun! After we are finished with our English learning activities, we go to the Swimming Pool to swim because this is the kids favorite activity. When we get in the water, we teach them how to swim and then we play various games.
Seeing the smile and entertaining them is one of the best things to experience. We as a service group are making the kids lives a happier place and providing a 'family' outside of their orphanage and this truly is a blessing. I love these kids and I am glad that I am a part of this service group.

Photo Credit: Alo Lenk

Local Volleyball Tournament: Event Crew

This past weekend our school hosted a mini volleyball tournament with 3 other local schools. For this two day event we had an event crew of 4 people. My job was to make sure that the judges were all set up with their screenshots and everything. To do this, I had to work collaboratively with others because I had to go to each of the teams and make sure that I have their rosters so that I can fill in the the score sheets. I also had to work with my team because each of us had a different responsibility to ensure that the event went smoothly. Throughout the day I was taking initiative by always doing my job and even other people's when they were not. On the second day of the tournament, I was all alone due to the fact that everyone else had other commitments. So i undertook this new challenge but I also showed perseverance by not giving up when a problem arose.
This was a good experience because it taught me how to manage an event all by myself but it also taught me the importance of team work and having a team.

Ravin and I during the volleyball tournament!

Weekly Football

We have still been playing football every week (perseverance) and each time I seem to improve my skills and gain new ones. I have been improving on my dribbling and shooting skills so that by the time our actual season comes along I will be the best that I can be. 

Each week we arrange the teams differently so that we all get to experience new teams and players. This helps us all to learn how to work collaboratively with others. With each new team, there is a designated captain and this captain is in charge of organizing the team and designating people specific positions. (planning and initiating). 

Kai and I congratulating each other for our good performance.

Going up for a header that i scored!

Slowing down the game and waiting for the right opportunity to attack.

SOS Meeting 4

This past Thursday our SOS group met with kids from the orphanage again! Our first activity that we did was to help them learn English. I asked my two new buddies, Ishara and Maric, basic questions in English and had them write down their responses in English so that they can learn it faster. Through this process I also got to know them better and I also developed my communication skills since they do not speak that good of English and I do not speak that good of Sinhalese. 

We planned on going swimming but sadly it was storming outside so instead we all went to the computer lab and let the kids play on the computers. They all rushed in their and asked us to out on their favorite gaming website. And for the rest of our session they played various games on the computer. 

Playing with these kids is a really fun experience and it also helps me engage with an issue of global importance.. This one being the the issue of many parents leaving their kids to become orphans. 

I can't wait to hang out with these kids again!

SOS Meeting

For our second SOS meeting we met with the orphans. They came to school and each of the SOS members picked two kids to focus on. We will stay with those kids for the rest of the year so that we develop a strong relationship with these kids. The two kids I get the privilege to hang out with for the whole year names are Maric and Ishara.
Once we got to know the kids names, me had them create a poster about stuff that defines them. They drew their names and things that they really like. After we drew the posters, we gave them food and drinks to have and then we just had a little social gathering.
For our next meeting we are planning to go and play some games in the pool. This will be really fun for the kids because they told us that they love to go swimming.

Maric on the left and Ishara on the right

These are the posters they drew.

Football

Every Wednesday and Thursday after school I have been playing little football matches with other kids from our school. On Wednesday, we play with kids from grades 8-12. This is fun because there is a wide variety of skills, talent and new players to get to know. On Thursday we play with the SAISA football team plus some adults. This is definitely my favorite football session because we divide the teams evenly and just play a match. There is a lot of experienced people playing on Thursdays so it the football is more intense and fun.

First SOS meeting

Yesterday we had our first SOS meeting. In this meeting we stated what are goals are for the whole year and we planned what we are doing for the next meeting.
Our goals for this year are for each SOS member to connect with 2-3 kids from the orphanage on a personal level so that we provide an 'older brother/relative' relationship to them. We will be meeting with them once every week with our same group of 2-3 kids so that we develop a really good bond with them for the whole year.
For next week we planned to meet the kids for the first time. They are going to come to OSC and while they are here we are planning on doing some activities to initiate our bond. We will be doing arts and crafts with them as well so that we can decorate our SOS board for everyone to see.

CAS Goals for 2014-2015

This year I plan on participating in many activities regarding CAS. For creativity I plan on getting involved with the Senior Play. For action I plan on playing football every Wednesday and Thursday while participating in SAISA Football as well as SAISA Track and Field. For service I am joining the service group SOS. In this service group, we will be going to a local orphanage here in Colombo to interact with the kids there and to play with them so that they have a fun time. They will also be coming here to OSC so that we can participate in different activities with them.

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth
This year I plan on minimizing my weaknesses as much as possible and increasing my areas of growth. I will be doing this by: practicing harder for my athletics, and just exploring my new options and attacking the ones I haven't done/feel interested in.

Undertaking New Challenges
This year I plan on undertaking new challenges such as drama and this new service group. I have not been a part of a drama performance before and I am hoping that this performance will give me new skills to add to my arsenal. Also, in regards to my new service group, I have not been involved with an orphanage group before. So me going and spending time with the orphans will be something new for me.

Working Collaboratively with Others
For this year, I plan on getting involved with a lot of activities and in each of the activities, there is a team. For me to be successful in these various groups, I have to be able to work collaboratively with others so that everything runs efficient and smooth.
For the play, I have to be able to work with everyone so that we are all able to make the play as best as it can be and so that everything will run smoothly.
For football I have to be able to work with my team so that we can play well and win. For track I have to be able to work with my relay teams so that we can be the fastest and win but in a bigger sense, I have to preform my best in everything so that my school team wins overall.
For service I have to be able to work with the kids so that we have a fun time and if we do group activities, we all have to work together to provide the best time for the orphans.

Shown Perseverance and Commitment in Their Activities
This year I will show perseverance and commitment by always going to my activities and never showing up late because I cant develop new skills if I am missing out on certain days and activities.

Engaged With an Issue of Global importance
Through my service group, SOS, we will be engaging with the orphans here in Colombo and helping them out and trying to give them a sense of family by hanging out with them and making them feel special by playing with them and getting them some gifts. Orphanages are all over the world and we are engaging with this issue of global importance through our service group.

Develop New Skills
This year I plan on developing new skills in all of my areas of CAS. For creativity, I am branching out and trying theater for the first time and by doing this I am gaining a new skill. For action, I plan on working more on my shooting skills for football because last year I really lacked in that category. For service I am trying something new by getting involved with the orphanage and I want to develop my communication skills because I will be communicating with locals.

Plan and Initiate Activities
For this year, my goal is to plan more activities for football so that we are better prepared for our final tournament.

Consider the Ethical Implications of my Actions

To address this learning outcome, I will play fair and abide by the rules for all of my sports and I will make sure all of my actions are kind hearted towards people.

 

 

End of Year Reflection

Throughout this year I have been involved with many different activities regarding CAS. For creativity I was involved in Model United Nations. For Action I was involved in SAISA Football and SAISA Track, Monday P90X workout sessions, Wednesday morning workout sessions, Thursday community football, and the Sri Lankan Under 19 Boys football tournament. And for service I was involved in Gecko Inc.

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth
Throughout this year, i have been able to see my strengths and my weaknesses, mainly throughout my athletic career. For football, i have noticed that my strengths are: defending, sprinting, crossing, and passing. I have been constantly pushing myself and practicing these skills so that they are the best that they can be, and after a long while of practice i can see that they are definitely getting there. A weakness that i have and are trying to develop, is my shooting skill. I have noticed that i am good a dribbling people and getting the ball near the net, but i can not score every time. This is a problem that i have been focusing on and practicing constantly and after a while, i noticed that they are getting better. For Track, my strengths are middle distance running. I seemed to excel in these categories (400m and 800m) whereas in my 200, i needed a bit of work. So sprinting is not my strong point when it comes to track.

Undertaken New Challenges
This year i have undertaken new challenges such as track. Before this year, i have never done track. So this year i went into the season unfamiliar with what to do and how to excel in the different categories. With alot of practice and determination, i managed to get through the season with 2 gold medals, 1 silver medal and a 5th place ribbon.

Worked Collaboratively With Others
I have had to work collaboratively with others throughout my school year. Most of which comes out through my athletics. Football is not an individual sport so that means every body needs to work together and pull their own weight on the team. If one person decides not to play as a team, the whole team falls. So we all work together and pass the ball and try our hardest to prevent the opposing team from scoring. Although track is an individual sport, there are team relays. I was fortunate enough to participate in both the 4x100m and 4x400m relays for our age group. In these relays, we had to work collaboratively as a team so that our hand offs were perfect and so that we can achieve a really good time to win and we did win both of our relays!

Shown Perseverance and Commitment in Their Activities

Throughout this year, i have stick with all of my activities and did not quit any of them. By sticking with these activities, i was able to gain maximum skills and i was able to benefit from those activities. 

Engaged With an Issue of Global Importance

Throughout our service group, Gecko Inc., we have been engaging with the issue of local children not being exposed to a variety of sports. Usually the local school here in Sri Lanka, the kids are only exposed to cricket and volleyball. So we made it our mission to bring different sport and athletic activities to them so that they are well educated. So throughout this year we have met with many different kids and we have played a variety of sports with them so that they gain a better knowledge of athletic activities.  

Overall, this year has been a really fun year and i have learned many different things that i will be able to continue using throughout my life!

Sport session with Local School

Yesterday kids from a local school came by our school to participate in sport-like activities. Yesterday we decided to play ultimate Frisbee. Throughout this game, we were working collaboratively with others to win the game. We had to pass and catch the Frisbee so that we could score. The children really enjoyed playing with us and had a really fun time! We even did some one on one playing time with the kids so we could get to know them on a personal level. We were engaging with an issue of global importance because we are bringing different, unfamiliar sports to kids who do not have access to these sports at their schools.

Me throwing the Frisbee to my partner!

Saisa: Track and Field

This years Track and Field season has come to an end. I am so sad to not be staying after school to practice anymore. Overall this was a great season, not just for me but for my team as well. To end our season we traveled to Chennai, India for the annual Track and Field SAISA Tournament. Our team worked really hard and gave it our all on every one of our events. Overall our team placed 4th out of the 7 international schools there. Which is an improvement from our 5th place last year. I think the feat that gave us a huge advantage was that us 15-19 year old boys placed first place out of our whole age group! We did this through winning both relays (4x100 and 4x400) and I participated in each one! Through these two events, we had to work collaboratively with each other because our hand offs had to be exact and on point each and every time or else we would  lose valuable time that could prevent us from placing. I met alot of really good people over this SAISA Competition and i really enjoyed competing. I cant wait to do it again!

Me, Nikita, Dylan and Coach Sue. Right after we won our 4x400m relay race!

The OSC U19 boys 4x400m Relay Team standing on the 1st place podium where we received our gold medals!

The OSC team running a victory lap at the end of the tournament! The boys U19 4x100m relay team was leading the lap because we just won our second relay! 

Me recieving my silver medal for my 800m run! I am shaking the hand of the first place winner!

Me sprinting my 200m race!

Week Without Walls: Jaffna Edition

For my Week Without Walls trip, I had the experience of going to Jaffna. Jaffna was the main place of operations for the LTTE (Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam) and this was also where most of the war took place. While we were in Jaffna, we saw the aftermath of the war, talked with the locals to get a better understanding on how life was like during that time period. We were engaging with an issue of global importance because we were going around Jaffna and talking to people about the civil war so that we gained a better view on what happened during the war. We had to work collaboratively with each other when telling our story of what we did in Jaffna.


Our main goal of this trip was to tell our story via media. Everyday we each had to get on twitter and tweeted things that we felt important to us. The link to our twitter page is https://twitter.com/osc_jaffna . On our trip we also created a video of our experience.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Doo2LjRPYU.


Overall the trip was amazing and unforgettable. I learned more about the history of Sri Lanka on this trip than I have during my stay in Colombo.

CAS Goals for Semester 2

As this new semester begins, I will be making new goals for CAS. Last semester I participated in MUN, SAISA Football, and Gecko Incorporated. This semester I will be doing similar things, except for SAISA Football I will be doing SAISA Track.


Goals for creativity:
Get better at my debating skills through MUN.

Goals for Action:
Work on my team building skills through the relay events. Build my personal skills and make my times better for my various events that I am participating in.

Goals for Service:
Connect with an issue of global importance by reaching out to the community via sports activities and teaching them things that they do not know. Our service, Gecko INC, plans to travel to Kilinochi in April as our main project. But throughout the up coming months, we will be spending time with the local schools in Colombo and playing/teaching various activities with them.

SAISA Football Tournament

For the end of our Football season, we traveled to Muscat, Oman to take part in the U19 SAISA Football Tournament. In this tournament, 8 different teams participated from different countries: Overseas School of Colombo, The American International School of Muscat, American school in Chennai, American School in Dhaka, Lincoln School, Lahore American School, Karachi American School , and American School in Bombay.
For this tournament we split into two different pools and for the first two days we did pool play to see where we were ranked in our pool. For our first pool game we faced ASID (Dhaka) and we tied them one to one. I scored the first goal in the first three minutes of the game by a header. My teammate Yaman crossed the ball beautifully to me and i connected with it to score the goal. It was beautifully executed! Then we seemed to fall apart during the last half of the game and we let them score a goal which tied the game. The second game that we played that day was against KAS (Karachi). We lost that game two to one. I feel that we didn't play our hardest against them and that cost us the match.
That night we had a social night This was where we got to hang out with members from the other teams and basically just hang out with them. It was very good to hangout with them and just get to know them!
The next day we finished up pool play by playing against ASIC (Chennai). We played our hearts out but sadly lost the game two to zero. Which is better than any other team in our pool did because Chennai beat them all by 4 points! So to us we played really well! At the end of the day we started the knockout games. For our first knockout games we faced ASB (Bombay) and we tied them one to one. So then we went to penalty kicks. This was very intense! We scored our first penalty by our goal keeper Joaquin, and then he went on to save Bombay's first penalty kick. So the score was tied nil nil. Then our next kicker missed and theirs scored. The score was now one nil them. Our next taker missed his penalty but then the ref blew the whistle and said he had a retake because the goalie came off of his line. Sadly, he missed his retake. And then their taker made his making the score two nil them. Our next kicker missed his by such a little bit and then their kicker scored his and thus ending the game. So the best that we could place now was only fifth place.
The next day we had a game against Dhaka, again, to see who would play for fifth place. We ended up beating them three to two which made us feel really good because that was our first win of the tournament. So then we went to play for fifth place against Karachi, whom we already lost to before. We went in really strong and played our best football in that game than we did during that whole tournament! We ended up winning 2-1!
I had such a great time at the tournament and met some really amazing people! This experience has taught me to always give it my all and never stop trying.