Year 10 boys Basketball team finish third in England!

Alder’s Year 10 boys Basketball team finished third place in the England Basketball Under 15’s Conference this year, representing the North of England.

After beating Danum Technology College from Doncaster in the quarter finals 81 – 72, they took part in the Final Fours event at Nottingham Wildcats Arena on Saturday 14th May. Unfortunately the Year 10’s lost their semi-final 63 – 70 in the last 90 seconds of the game against the eventual winners, Holy Trinity Church of England School from Crawley. The game was tied right the way through the match until the last 90 seconds when Holy Trinity pulled away scoring free throws due to the amount of team fouls by Alder.

After getting over the disappointment of not reaching the final they then went on to redeem themselves with an emphatic victory over Burleigh College from Loughborough 103 -48 to claim the bronze medals. At the end it felt like our first game would have been worthy of being the final.

Mr Bibby said, ‘The lads have trained hard all year in school and for their club, Reddish Rebels, and set their sights on reaching the National Finals so to actually do so is amazing. The whole school is incredibly proud of them. We have played schools in Bolton, Warrington, Blackburn and Harrogate and they have had nothing else in their sights other than finishing as National Champions. The Semi-Final and Final were both played within a few hours of each other so it was a really tough day for the team and after getting over the disappointment of losing the semi-final, the boys went out and won in style to get third place to give the travelling supporters something to cheer about. They were definitely good enough to have won the whole thing but they just ran out of luck in the first game.’

Many thanks to all the staff and students that came along to support on the day!