IFG Roundup: Week 3

Led by their dedicated and talented captains from the women’s floorball and men’s basketball teams, find out how far Team Law made it in this week’s roundup of  IFG!

Women’s Floorball

Following the defeat of our Men’s floorball team last month in their group stage matches, it was time for our Women’s floorball team to step up to the plate on the 2nd day of September, and restore the fear-inducing name of Team Bukit Timah. Armed with tactical tricks and lessons learned (conveyed by MVP Edmund Ong), 2 insane trainings (one of which had an impressive attendance of 3 enthusiastic Y1s who skipped a Contract lecture – commendable dedication!) under our belts, and even a laptop (Attn: resident Y3 star player Sim Hong), our team eagerly took on the challenge.

Business: 1-0

In true “ripping off the bandaid QUICKLY” fashion, our first match was against the biggest beast of the group – Business. Running up and down the court doing warm-up drills with all the choreography of a kpop girl group, our girls were admittedly quaking a little in their non-marking sole shoes.

Despite their strong attack and impregnable (Business) structure on court, their forwards were no match for our Dependable Defender, Y2 Jheong Siew Yin, who took it upon herself to become the Great Wall of MPSH6 in the face of the hailstorm of haphazard balls flying her way.

The game concluded with a narrow score line of 1-0 in Business’ favour, which was nevertheless encouraging, since we had Overheard@BTC that they had trainings 3 times a week. The Court was pleased.

SDE: 0-0

Perhaps shook by our excellent performance against BIZ, the SDE players spent much of the 9 minutes playing at half-court press, allowing Y2s Melinna and Captain Tasha to advance very slowly beyond the half-court line. However, due to SDE’s heavy focus on defence, our forwards were unable to break their duck despite multiple attempts.

USP: 1-0

In what was probably the most eventful match of the day, Law lost to USP again with a tight scoreline of 1-0. However, this was a team that we had Overheard@CinnamonCollege trained 3 times a week as well (source: USPy Y2 Ong Zhe Yi) which made Captain Tasha very happy with her team’s ‘minimum effort, maximum results’ performance.

At the 3-minute mark, the valiant effort put up by one of our forwards (Y2 Adeline Tan) against the strong counter-attack by the USPlayers was disrupted when, in an exciting scuffle, her hairband broke! This however, did nothing to stop her attempt to push the ball out of our half. With her hair flying in the wind, she used her loose braids to block the opponent’s view and successfully cleared the ball out of the danger zone. Our players on the bench heaved a collective sigh of relief. Or admiration. We’re not sure.

In an unfair move, the USP team brought in foreign talent (an exchange student) with twice the physical strength of our average player, and who towered over our ‘tiny 9XS and 3S shirt size’ team. In fact, we were all distracted by her choice of fashion — yoga pants! Her interesting choice of floorball attire revealed that she had certainly been doing plenty of squats — an exercise regrettably missing from the Law team’s training routine.

Another exciting scuffle occurred when the USP captain (defendant) waved her blade too high, and a little too close to the Law captain’s (plaintiff) face. Despite being friends from JC, some intimidation was used and the plaintiff managed to claim damages for assault in the form of 3 free balls!

So although we may have let a ball in during this game, we were the true winners. (Balls are expensive guys)

Computing: 0-0

Having been kicked out of the running for the semi-finals at that stage, the Law team decided to shake things up and turn our focus to the next big competition — training for LawMed. Freed from the shackles of internal conflict (between wanting to win matches and not wanting to lose precious studying time), our girls held nothing back and put up a strong fight against Computing.

Many shots were taken. None went in. More importantly, none were let in either!

The multi-talented freelance reporter/wannabe coach/captain (who forgot to bring balls to the match) would like to extend her deepest gratitude to her teammates: the Y1s (Trixie, Min Yi, Jia Yi) for giving up precious time that could have been spent perfecting their LARC memos to come down for IFG, the Y2s (Raeann, Zhe Yi, Melinna, Adeline, Siew Yin) for leaving behind their muggers for a day to chase some balls, the Y3 (Hongs) for not abandoning the team, and Y4 (Sharon) for still being the loudest screamer across all the faculties.

We hope to come back stronger for LawMed, this time maybe after having mastered the art of squats. If you wish to join us on this exciting journey or just to pick up recreational floorball, let any of our team members know!

 

Men’s Basketball

After a fantastic offseason of trades, free agent signings, amazing draft picks and drama — oh wait, what’s that? This isn’t the NBA? I’m not Steph Curry? Well I guess it’s time to write about IFG again.

Ok, sarcasm aside, IFG is the time of year that the motto “ball is lyfe” (yes with a “y”) is exemplified, as players take a break from panicking over grade free first semesters, piercing corporate veils and pretending to have a social life.

This year’s team was highlighted by the addition of a bunch of strong freshmen, as well as three exchange students who made the team more multi-racial than the 2017 Presidential Election.

Looking through our fixtures, Captain Linming could not help but spout more vulgarities than an Ozzy Man review, but with the new additions, the future was looking bright, even if they were masked by the talents of Business, Yale-NUS, Medicine and USP.

Business

Someone needs to talk to the UTown maintenance staff, because the Sports Hall seemed to offer no protection against the rain. Now if you go and check the weather report for the 2^nd of September, you’ll probably realize that this is a joke about how the Business team rained three pointers down on the law side. Despite a rain storm of biblical proportions, the law team put up an admirable fight, going down 34-19.

USP

After a heart breaking loss last year to USP, the Law team was thirstier than a drunk guy at a club for a win. As Daryl “Stop It” Ong so aptly put, we were “hungry”… and thirsty… Basically we just needed a meal because our game had ran into lunch time.

The game started off well, with the Canadian duo of Sam Pivnick and John Farine running the break and getting easy transition points. Li Zixuan showed us why basketball is such a popular sport in China as he orchestrated the offence with ease. Freshman, Law King 2017, and all round good guy Jerry Wang distracted opponents with his catwalk poses before jumping over them and throwing the ball in, because lay ups are for weaklings.

At the half, Law led 10-0, and it remained the same in the second half, as our bench mob took to the floor and did their dirty work, pushing back a motivated USP team. Ben Ted tried flirting with the referees at one point, though all that did was to cause them to miss even more foul calls. New comer Jon Hwang used a variety of pump fakes to get open jump shots, whilst Mr Photogenic Khe Han showed us that his abs weren’t just for show, crashing the boards with reckless abandon. John Wu showed us his “Hard Boiled” tenacity, driving to the basket, even with an eerie smile on his face

In the end, Law won 18-8.

Medicine

You know when the other team has a player that everyone refers to as “Jesus”, you’re going to have a loooooong day. That said, it quickly became evident that we may have overestimated the powers of our bearded friend, as after being blocked once, he became passive, probably afraid of being denied again by a mere mortal.

With their star player taking a more passive role, the Canadians went to work on the medicine defence, relentlessly driving and drawing fouls. The team then began to press a panicked medicine side, who suddenly realized that their easy prey had become hunters. Nick Yap used his experience in relentless hard work to pressure the medicine side into countless turnovers which became easy scores for the law side. However, even with the additional points, the medicine team was able to take advantage of the running clock, and ran it down to secure a four point win.

YNC

Playing the only other team that was more multi-cultural than us was daunting — we had to let them know who was the most diverse team there. The game started off well with the YNC team unable to buy a bucket following a three from John Farine.  However, the YNC team found their groove, as their guards began to penetrate the defense, taking advantage of their speed. Soon, the score was in their favour, and remained that way until the half.

The second half was a game of catch up, however, the discount Canadian Splash Brothers stepped up in the big moment, as Sam Pivnick splashed a three to bring the game within 2. With the clock winding down, everyone was on the edge of their seats. The ball was in Law’s possession, and they swung it around, looking for a good shot. John Farine caught it, and let it fly — splash.

Money.

Pandemonium.

Law wins.

Whilst we didn’t make it to the semi-finals, to quote the Canadians’ sentiments: “That was great fun. We should do this every week.” Sport is all about fun, team work and teasing each other relentlessly for stupid antics on court. We had all those things on Saturday, and the captain could not be prouder of his squad.

Special thanks to the captains for their contributions. Stay tuned for more updates coming next week!