SAISA SWIMMING 2013

The swimming season began on the 16th of August. The same time as Girl's and Boy's Volleyball. This is the 4th SAISA Swimming that I have been involved in. When training for swimming there is a certain system of coaching/training which splits the group up. There are 6 lanes in the pool. Lanes 1 and 2 are the "advanced lanes" which are mainly for those who have been training for many years and are practicing skills rather than technique. Lanes 3 and 4 are the "intermediate" lanes. Usually where the swimmers go who know how to swim each stroke but have weaknesses with techniques. And finally, lanes 5 and 6 are for the "beginners." These two lanes have a separate coach who focuses on teaching them the techniques and the method of doing all four strokes to prepare them for the various races. The training schedule has three mandatory trainings as well as two optional ones. The mandatory practices take place on Tuesdays from 3:00-4:45PM, Fridays from 3:00-4:45PM, and Saturdays from 8:00-10:00AM. The two optional practices are Mondays from 3:00-4:45PM and Wednesdays from 7:00-8:30AM. I usually attend Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and occasionally Wednesdays. I am in Lane 1 seeing as I have been doing swimming since 7th grade. We begin our training with a warm up, followed by about 3 mains sets and ending with a cool down. On saturdays we end with a team activity which helps our team spirit and bonding. 
This is usually what one of our training schedules looks like 

Advanced

Warm Up: 100 Choice of Stroke 100 Kick 100 Pull 100 IM drill  (25 drill/stroke)                                                                                     400

First Set: IM 200 IM drill 50 free ez 100 IM 50 free ez Rest 45 seconds                                                            350

Stroke Set: Free and Back 150 free drill (drill 1) 150 free 100 flutter KOB 100 free Rest 30 seconds 100 back drill (drill 3) 100 back 100 flutter KOB 100 back Rest 30 seconds                                                      900

Fin Set: Back and Free 50 free sprint 20 second rest 50 back sprint 20 second rest With fins working on fast turnover (speed and number of arm stokes)     X6                                                         600

Main Set Kick/Sprint 25 each of Free Back (No board-streamline on back) X8                                                        400

The events that I am involved in for local tournaments and for the SAISA tournaments and the times that have been recorded for me so far are: 
50m-Freestyle - 34.58 seconds
50m-Butterfly - 40.13 seconds
100m-Freestyle - 1:20.66
100m-Backstroke
100m- IM (all strokes)- 1:31:98
200m- Backstroke - 3:28.48
200m- IM (all strokes)- 3:26.34
200m- Medley Relay
200m- Freestyle Relay 
400m- Freestyle Relay

The SAISA tournament will take place in ASB, American School of Bombay, starting the 9th of October and ending the 11th of October. The tournament will be a duration of 3 days. My goals for SAISA are to be able to medal in my strongest events such as 50 free, 50 fly, 100 IM, and perhaps even 100 back. I hope to come back having improved all my personal bests even if i do not earn any individual medals. 
I have also taken a leadership role during swimming which counts for my creativity aspect of CAS. This involved me getting assigned a certain stroke or technique with a certain distance and creating a work out for the rest of the team. This helped both others and myself because it gave me an opportunity to observe the weaknesses and flaws of other's techniques which helped both me and the other swimmers improve on that specific fault. 

Travel Team SAISA Swimming 2013 

IB Orientation

IB orientation is a trip that the DP1 eleventh grade students are taken on every year as an introduction to the Diploma program. The purpose of the trip is to interact and collaborate with your classmates whilst in a different environment in order to come together to problem solve, take risks, and learn. For more than 7 years OSC has partnered with Borderlands for the orientation trip. Borderlands has both programs in Sri Lanka as well as Nepal. Borderlands is an outdoor action program that offers many activities such as white water rafting, kayaking, abseiling, hiking, canyoning, and much more. It is located in Kithugala, about 3 hours away from OSC. The camp consists of tents for the visitors to stay in, bathrooms with shower and toilet facilities, and a long house where meals are eaten and where reflections and relaxation times are completed. 

DAY 1

The first day after arriving at the camp we immediately went rafting. It was a very interesting change of atmosphere to be on a river instead of a classroom, and it gave us a chance to be able to show some of our leadership as well as other personal skills to work together to be able to meet all requirements. 

Once we were through all the rapids, we stopped at a spot to have a little fun. Some of the boats were flipped upside down and we all took turns doing flips and jumps, and even slipping and falling off into the river. Great pictures were taken and many memories came out of this experience. After multiple laughs and pictures we set off again to go have lunch. It was an amazing feeling sitting on the rocks looking over the river having lunch with the class. After lunch we hiked up to the canyoning location. After a brief discussion about safety and rules and regulations we were able to enjoy this once in a life time opportunity of various jumps and slides off the naturally formed canyons. Some friends and classmates had fears and were nervous with this specific activity. This gave me a chance to help them and reassure them that they'd regret it if they didn't try it. I then also held their hands as we jumped together making sure they felt comfortable and were able to get over their fears. They thanked me after which was a really great feeling. I feel like we were all able to get through the jumps and slides with so little complications and time wasting that we were even able to run the extended canyon which on the week without walls trip we were not able to complete. This allowed me to get out of my comfort zone as well seeing as I was finally trying new things that I had not done before. With many cuts and bruises and aching butts we hiked back down to the rafts. We calmly made our way back to the camp all jumping out of the boats in the end to float back. This gave me another opportunity to help a classmate that was not particularly comfortable in the river. 
After showering and settling in we made our way to the longhouse to socialize and have dinner. There we got a briefing on The theory of knowledge and Creativity, Action, Service aspects of the IB orientation trip. Socializing gave us a chance to get to know each other more than we already did. We looked at pictures of the day and all hurried to our tents exhausted from the long day and preparing for the adventures to come. 

DAY 2

On the second day we were all dreading the morning run up the mountain, which ended up being cancelled. We left the camp at 7am to make our way to the historic Belilena Cave for our TOK workshop. The 1.5 km hike was nothing but enjoyable. There was singing, games, sprinting, running, and a whole lot of laughs the entire way up. Of course accompanied by the occasional "are we there yet" and "My legs hurt." None the less I certainly enjoyed the hike and got many fun memories out of it. When we reached our destination we spend a little time exploring the cave and reviewing its history. That was followed by a two and a half hour TOK workshop to prepare us for the next two years of trying to understand the basic aspects of knowledge. The workshop was filled with fun collaboration based activities for the class to complete. 
After the TOK session we began another, longer hike to the "water house" where we stopped for lunch and began to prepare for our abseiling adventure. The hike up the rock was very steep and tiring filled with screams due to leeches and many bruises due to falling. Once we reached the top, a storm started brewing which was both terrifying as well as freezing. The students that had gone abseiling before all did really well helping and reassuring those who hadn't and were nervous. No one cried and we were all able to get down the waterfall. This was the last experience of the day and we took the buses back to the camp where we again discussed the day, viewed pictures, prepared for the following day and got a good nights rest. 

DAY 3

On the final day we were awakened by the sound of teachers telling us to prepare for the morning run. After the tiring run we all went into the freezing strong current river and splashed around. This was followed by breakfast. After breakfast we were ready to go into our service aspect of the trip and set off in our assigned groups to interview various local people of different jobs, backgrounds, and positions. We interviewed them on both the community as well as their jobs. The locals were all very welcoming and friendly and the interviews were completed successfully. 

After the interviews we all went back to the camp to discuss what the locals had just shared with us. We had many interesting stories to tell resulting in many inspiring ideas about the community and the way it develops. After the discussion we had a big lunch and went to pack up our things to travel back to Colombo. Over all I would say that this was an amazing trip. I think the entire class of 2015 left with many new learned skills, many memories, and definitely with a lot of satisfaction. 

Photos provided by borderlandssrilanka.blogspot.com

CAS Goals

I have numerous goals for my CAS for the following 2 years. The goals I will set may have been inspired by previous experience or knowledge with that specific idea or activity. I may elaborate on previous achievements to try and extend them further into something more meaningful and less broad. Other goals may be goals I strive for even though I am not familiar with the activity or idea but hope to conquer throughout the next two years gaining many new experiences and learning new things about myself, my community, and even the rest of the world. From these goals I hope to gain many new skills which can benefit me in university, getting a job, and skills beneficial for the rest of my life. 

Goals for Creativity: 

My first and main goal regarding creativity is related to SAISA Swimming. This year the highschoolers were given an opportunity to lead a couple of the workouts for the season. Additionally, the workouts we introduce to the athletes are workouts we created ourselves. We're given a specific stroke or stroke set with the amount of meters required for that workout, with that information we continue on to research various techniques and workouts relevant to the stroke or stroke set. The amount of meters is very important in choosing which techniques or drills are most appropriate for the workout. There are many different elements involved in creating the workout. Coaching the actual workouts are very important as it will affect the swimmer's performance during competition. My goal for this is to be able to lead the 3 workouts assigned to me in a way where I am able to improve an athlete's technique or give them slight tips on how to improve. With this they will be able to apply those techniques to their stroke in a certain race and perhaps decrease their time or prevent an injury which in the long run will have very positive affects on the swimmer. It is a simple yet complex goal. Though it does not require a huge amount of time nor many resources it does require me to use my personal leadership, communication, and collaboration skills which will benefit both the swimmer and myself in the long run based on the learner profile. I am currently not involved in visual arts nor performing arts which makes it difficult for me to base any creativity goals in those specific subjects or projects but i do hope to be able to be involved in one of those two subjects one way or another, whether it's helping out with a play, performance, an event, or an exhibition. If I am involved in one of these my goals would include being able to be a powerful contribution to the final product as well as being able to input and share ideas of my own within the given task. 

Goals for Action:

I plan for action to be my most involved part of CAS as a whole seeing as I have done and will continue doing more than enough action based activities throughout my time in osc to be able to reflect on them. I have already participated in a total of 8 SAISAS and 1 MSSE sport events. Currently I am involved in SAISA Swimming'13 and I have set a couple simple personal goals for this specific sport season:

-To continue training 2-3 times a week after the sport season is over
-To earn at least 1-2 individual event medals at the SAISA meet
-Working on improving my personal bests
-Improving and extending my endurance 

I have been involved in swimming for 4 years now and hope to be able to gain more skills and experiences throughout this next season. I plan to not only help myself but this year focus on helping others as well, such as younger kids or athletes that may be new to swimming or swimming at OSC. I can do this through my leadership role in the training workouts this year as well as giving others simple tips on their weaknesses or fears. 
I also am planning to try out for the Basketball and perhaps even the Track and Field team. I have been involved in each of these before. I have been part of the track and field team three years. Being part of the track team helped me meet new people from both osc and the other SAISA schools. I have made many great friendships as well as achieving many personal bests and even medals at SAISA events. If I try out this year I hope to be able to strengthen my weaknesses. This would include long distance running and specific field events such as shot put. In order to do this I would need to train on my endurance. I was involved in SAISA basketball last year and MSSE basketball in middle school. When trying out for basketball I hope to improve my lay up and shooting skills as well as participating in team sports instead of individual sports. For Action I hope to be able to achieve many things worth reflecting on. 

Goals for Service: 

Previously I had been a part of the service Temple school for about 2 years. There I learned more about interacting with children when there is a language barrier which really benefitted me for future school trips or projects that required us to talk using hand gestures or other types of communication. I then later became part of the new service group called Gecko Inc. As part of the first group to do the service I always felt like I was able to watch the group develop in a way that people in other service groups would not. Which is why when I began the diploma program I signed up to be a service leader for Gecko Inc. Seeing as I am now a leader I have less personal goals but rather goals for the rest of the group. As a leader my goal for this year is to make sure that everyone is focused and working on a productive task. As well as that I will make sure that all members have an equal contribution to any projects we might complete. I want to be able to get this service group to turn into one that can continue to run years from now. It was only created around 2 years ago and only this year it has found a certain location and goal to focus on. I want to be able to as a group elaborate on that and get Gecko Inc. to become as popular and beneficial for outside communities as the other service groups. As for myself, I want to be able to be the leader that knows how to problem solve and will be able to while collaborating with the co-leader, bring this service group to success. This requires me to be extra engaged in the group and the tasks during meetings as well as outside. I will also need to work on my leadership skills and my ability to tell others what tasks to do. Mostly, my goal for this group is to be able to get everyone to collaborate and work together to be selfless and help those who are not as fortunate as us. 

Goals for Academics:

For the following next two years I have a couple of goals based on my academics. Primarily, I would like to try and earn 6s in at least two of my classes. Secondly, I will try to earn nothing below a 4. I feel like the grade range between 4-6 is a strong range where I will be satisfied with my results. During the next two years I would like to focus on being more organized with my work, trying to stop procrastinating and managing my time wisely when I am also involved in sports and service. This would reduce the amount of stress on myself and also allow me to have more free time when closer to the due date as well as being able to reflect and improve on the tasks before finalizing them.