Try Victory

The AISG Rams traveled to the Western Academy of Beijing (WAB) for Tri-Cities to compete against the International School of Beijing, Western Academy of Beijing, and Shanghai American School of Pudong.

The first game was between WAB and ISB. However, the AISG players were not able to see the first two games in the morning due to arriving in the afternoon. The WAB and ISB game ended with WAB defeating ISB 3-1. The second game was between ISB and SASPD where ISB took the win 2-1. AISG played their first game against SASPD on Friday afternoon shortly after arriving in Beijing. The Rams took their first step to victory by beating SASPD 2-0. The Rams played a good first game.

AISG entered the finals for the first time in AISG history and they were matched against one of the best teams in APAC – WAB. AISG lost the game to WAB. The Ram players gave their best effort and improved significantly from last year, only losing by 1. The WAB commentators mocked the Rams before the game started and were shocked with the results after the game.

The final match was tough for the Rams; they struggled to attack and focused more on their defense. When I interviewed one of the players on the team, Chirag Asnani, about his thoughts on the tournament, he said, “Throughout the years, AISG has been the underdog at previous APAC and Tri-Cities tournaments. We’ve been the team to beat and the team that other schools look down on and underestimate.” This year’s Tri-Cities tournament was a way to change that, and that is exactly what we did. Starting in October, the team began training for a result like second place at a major tournament with APAC teams, and the hard work we put in paid off in one of the most unexpected ways. You can always improve and no team is going to have a perfect tournament, but the way we played at Tri-Cities was a huge improvement from the past.