Page 96 - Wish Stream Year of 2019

The International Cadet Perspective,
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
Basketball Tour Latvia
OCdt Al-alawi (Oman)
The RMAS Basketball Team conducted an overseas sports tour to Latvia from the 12th – 16th August 2019. The tour provided the team with an opportunity to both improve their skills on the court and interact with other teams from across Latvia, where basketball is their second favourite sport after ice-hockey (Latvia’s national sport). The team participated in two basketball tournaments. The first tournament was held at the National Defence Academy of Latvia, which saw a number of local units partici- pate. The other tournament was held by Ghetto Games. It is a big organisation that regularly plan and execute a number of different sporting tour- naments. This particular competition was Street Basketball or ‘Streetball’. Unfortunately, and because it was Street Basketball, the team had to divide its players into three teams where each team was put into different groups. Each group had six other teams to compete against.
The RMAS team had five international play- ers including myself, and included representa- tion from Ghana, Nepal, Pakistan, Ukraine, and Oman. My team consisted of three other inter- national Cadets for the Streetball tournament. It was such a pleasure to be the international team that represented Sandhurst in Latvia. It is true that we did not make it to the finals, but we were
Some of the team awaiting the Riga Old Town walking tour
The international team waiting for their next game
able to bring two wins in on behalf of the Acad- emy team.
Honestly, the tour gave us an excellent oppor- tunity, not just to skill-up our fitness, but also to spend some time with such friendly local citizens. The team was able to interact with the public not just throughout the tournaments, but also by visiting the British Embassy, The Museum of the Occupation of Latvia and Riga Old Town. All these visits helped us explore Latvia more and learn more about people and the culture in gen- eral. I am personally looking forward to my next big visit and hope that it will live up to the experi- ence I had in Latvia.
Big smiles in Riga Old Town
94 SANDHURST