Tom Pereira - Final Fours

This season, Derby Trailblazers u-18 basketball team reached the Final Fours. The competition is sponsored by the RAF and the semi finals and final were held at RAF Cosford in Shropshire, on the 19^th of April. This day is the culmination of hard work and team work progressing through the national league, and several play off games, overcoming other teams from all over England, to come down to being one of the last four teams in the competition.

I was still slightly nervous as we travelled to Cosford even though it was only a year ago that I was there with the Derby Trailblazers u-16 team.

Our semi final opponents were Manchester Magic, who unfortunately for us had brought their "shooting boots". The game and team work that had got us this far had little effect on Manchester, as the romped 95-54. In that game my personal performance wasn't the best I had produced that season, and it felt like there was "cling film over the rim" as nothing that left my hand would drop through the hoop, where as everything that Manchester shot didn't even touch the sides. On the day we were just out played, but that didn't stop me from doing all that I could.

The 3^rd and 4^th play off places were to be decided by ourselves and Hackney White Heat a team from London. Going into this game our sprits were dented from the semi final loss, but our coach managed to find some way of motivating us. We all seemed more relaxed and this showed in how we all played. Although Hackney were all physically bigger than we were, they were always playing catch up from the word "go". We won the game 94-83. We took home the bronze medal, which overall was better than a 4^th place certificate, but it was wrong colour!