FS3/3 CAS Reflection

FS3/3 was a Basketball event that I organised in collaboration with my friends. As I was always fond of the sport, I was inclined towards organising a basketball event. But it goes without saying that no event is without challenges and no event is a success without overcoming those challenges. What I couldn’t realise was when and how did the event become reality from just an idea.

The planning stage was the toughest as we had to figure out a lot of the things. We needed permissions and confirmations from different ends to make it happen. We faced the real challenge when we had to come up with ideas to make the tournament unique. Thinking of something that would set our tournament apart from the other tournaments. Since the 3 on 3 formats was not popular in the city, we thought the 3 on 3 formats would just do the trick.

Coordinating with the sponsors was another challenge. We had to achieve different people to sponsor us not knowing whether they would agree to help our cause or not. We literally had to go every day to different sponsors and sometimes more than thrice for a single sponsor. I always knew that being an 11th-grade student, convincing the sponsors was not going ti be easy and would require running around after them from the day we had started to plan this event till the day the event had ended. I knew it required to be dedicated and committed. We ended up with Uber Cabs, My FM, My Mobile, Dairy Corner and Mini Meals as our sponsors.

While planning the tournament, we decided that we would only spread the word and expect the player from Surat. Because it was the first time that the tournament was taking place and it had no reputation, good or bad. But we took up the challenge and invited teams from other cities such as teams from Ahmedabad which showed up.

I took up the responsibility of designing the logo. The reason why I took it up was because graphics was my weak point and this was an opportunity to work on my weakness. There were some ethical issues that had come up later with my design as I had manipulated the school logo to create our logo, which was approved by our HOS at first, but later the logo was questioned. It was still unclear as to whose fault it was, or was it just a communication problem but the issue was sorted out later.

It was not an event that I had organised alone. I had two other people who had organised it with me. Initially, we tried ti keep our organising team as small as possible as the credit for the success would be divided only amongst the three of us. But as it turns out an event can be successful when more people work at it and the work is divided. Then we appointed the volunteers for managing different departments of the event such as photography, registration, food etc. Becuase we worked collaboratively the event was successful enough.

One other ethical consideration was that out court is located just beside an orchard. The trees were home to a lot of birds. But with that came a lot of bird droppings on the court. So we had small but loud explosions to scare away the birds from their homes.

The execution was the toughest part. A lot of things had ti go our way. The weather, for example, was not in our control. It could rain anytime as the even was on 25th of September. Managing the event as it progresses and making decisions on your feet is an entirely different experience. Also with managing the event, I also took part in the event. So it was very important that I be fair and play according to the rules. Not being biassed towards my own team and accept whatever the outcome was.

What I learnt from this event was working hard and planning ahead helps. There were some obvious flaws that we as tournament directors will improve upon. This event taught me that you something that you want to achieve is never achieved instantly. You have to work for it over a period of time. Another skill that I learnt was taking sound decisions on my feet and being fair.