ISST Basketball Tournament

Our very own March Madness at St. John's 11-14 March, 2015! Our school was the jots this year and welcomed 8 schools to the D2 men's basketball championship. St.Johns has a young team and it is the proverbial "building year" for the Varsity squad. The JV looks loaded and will look to do some damage in 2016, meanwhile, StJ ended the tournament in 4th place. A bit of history..

Although some interschool competition did exist prior to 1968, the first real championship was held in Zurich in 1968 in soccer for boys and volleyball for girls. The organization now boasts a membership of twenty three (23) international schools consisting of both full member and sport member schools.

The ISST is fundamentally a Varsity athletic organization which governs competitive athletic championships for its 23 member schools. The ISST currently sanctions 12 sports annually across two divisions for 22 Varsity championships in soccer, volleyball, field hockey, cross country, rugby, swimming, basketball, softball, baseball, tennis, golf and track and field plus three (3) Junior championships in the sports of cross country, swimming and track and field.

Men's volleyball is very popular here, so Danny may end up trying that sport while here ( Hannah Bedner-he may need some tips this summer!)

The teams rolled in on Wednesday and we were there to greet them. families of athletes are asked to take on "housers" and we got two great boys from Hillingdon, a school in London. Jacob's dad works for Costco in Iceland and the UK ( who knew?!)  and Cedric's dad is with Allergan. They are both freshman and their whole team is freshman and sophomores...all 8 of them! The poor guys, they came in last, they didn't win a single game:(

But are they nice! Very polite, ate everything I fed them, didn't mention when the hot water ran out, and left us a lovely box of chocolates. They enjoyed their stay I think. On Thursday Jerry and Danny walked them down to the Chausse and they had durums at the Turkish place and then went and shot pool at the sports bar.

Danny, Jacob and Cedric at Touchdown

Both Thursday and Friday were filled with games, with Molly cheering for anyone and everyone! We had a bunch of shifts at concessions, including manning the grill to do American Hamburgers--a best seller. Loads of laughter, comraderie and bagging of popcorn. We even helped sell the awesome tshirts they had to commemorate the event, here is Charlotte modeling it after a run..

So our first experience as a host family went well, though I overbought on the snack foods (I know you are not surprised!) and we look forward to having more housers as the baseball season begins.

Danny has made the high school Varsity team!!

Basketball!

March madness and it's only February! Danny had a game on Wednesday at ISB and then 2 games Friday night and 2 games on Saturday morning against ISH(Int. School of The Hague). He has been playing on both the A team-8th grade varsity and the B Team-mostly 7/6th grade JV. For Danny, the idea is play as much as he can so this has worked out perfectly. But what a week! He won a bunch, lost a couple and had a ton of fun! Jerry actually got to see 3 games and really enjoyed that( accept for the part where he wanted to be coaching! He kept muttering things like " just give me 10 minutes with your big men and this game will change! and the like!). The girls LOVE cheering on their brother, decked out in the St. John's Spirit Wear--Go Lions!

Wednesday 11/2/15 is his last game followed by an award presentation after winter break. I am super proud that he entered school and by the next week was on the team and the following week traveling off to Germany to play a road game. What a kid, what a school, what a great experience!