Opens PDSSSC Basketball Gala Day

On Wednesday 23rd of February, St Andrews College was represented by a group of boys and girls to compete in the Opens Boys’ and Opens Girls’ competition. This year’s boys’ competition introduced new schools such as St Dominic’s College, Patrician Brothers Blacktown, Parramatta Marist and St Gregory’s. It was sure to be a very competitive day.

For the boys, they started the competition with a win against St Greg’s A grade 24-22. After a slow start, the boys were able to rally back and sneak ahead in the final minutes of the game. The second game was against Penola and the boys won this game very convincingly 47-8. St Dom’s B grade was next, having played this team in the first round of Thursday PDSSC competition and only losing by 5 points, they were motivated for this game. However, we started very flat and could not match St Dom’s emphatic energy and lost the game 19-8. We would easily grab a win against Gilroy 27-13 to set up a must win game against Parramatta Marist. Unfortunately we would lose this game 23-18 to knock us out for a top 4 finish. 

We would finish 3rd in our pool which resulted in a game for 5th overall against St Clare’s Catholic High School. This was our last game for the day and there was a lot of energy from both teams. This game would come down to the wire and with St Andrews up by 3 with 30 seconds left, a turnover by St Clare’s allowed us to seal the win and finish 5th from the 12 teams that entered the competition. 

The boys should be very proud of the way they played and represented the College.

The Opens Boys were represented by: Magol Maker, John Lukudu, Brosnan Wells, Patrick Felipe, Xander Casipit, Erren Fernandez, Mathew Saguid, Ryan Laycock, Deng Joseph and Dominic Habil.

The girls started the competition with a close loss against St John XXIII Stanhope 20-11. This was followed by another consecutive close loss against Marian College 18-11 and a 3rd loss against Caroline Chisholm. These losses would fuel the motivation for the girls in what would be an encouraging win against Delaney college winning 24-4. The team finished 3rd in their pool which meant the St Andrews’ Senior Girls team would have a final game against the 3rd place team in the opposite pool, St Claires. Fortunately for St Andrews, St Clare’s decided to forfeit and thus the team finished with 2 wins and 3 losses finishing 5th overall out of 10 teams.

A big thank you to the Year 10, 11 and 12 students who represented the school. This list includes: Aboul Aguek, Dorothy Anzoa, Eulelia Barret, Katelyn Calima, Adut Domkuch, Alat Domkuch, Alenia Hartono, Abuk Magok, Hayley O’Connor, Maraia Pickering, Janelle San Jose, Patricia Tuazon and Nicole Wasef.  

Jason Alata
Music and VET Entertainment Teacher