Dear Chinthes,

There is an exciting opportunity for our high school students coming up. The SEASAC Arts Festival will be held for the first time in five years. If you are interested in participating in this event please continue reading to the SEASAC Information section where you will find out all the information you need about this exciting event.
In athletics news this week our high school football teams have made the Yangon Athletic Conference finals! Our high school footballers played on Friday and Wednesday evenings and have their final game tonight. Our middle school volleyball players had an away game against ILBC International School on Thursday. Please read below in the Middle School Athletics and High School Athletics sections for more news about these games.
Our SEASAC golf team returned to ISY last Friday with great experience and a couple of very good individual results. Please read the SEASAC Information section for more information on this tournament.
Athletics has come to elementary school. On Monday, December 4 and 11 there will be a grade 2-6 football tournament. This tournament will be from 2:30-4:00 PM on each day. The students have been informed of this tournament by their classroom teachers.

Middle School Athletics

On Thursday afternoon ISY middle school girls and boys volleyball teams traveled to ILBC International School for A team and Development team matches. ILBC always provides a lively atmosphere when they host athletics so it was always going to be a good time to be had.
In the girls matches, the Chinthes finally were able to put all their hard work and determination to work in this match. Unfortunately, they began playing like their old ways in the first game making way too many on court mistakes. But came flying back in the second and third games with great serving, on court communications, and plenty of movement on the court. This team is ready for the Yangon Athletic Conference finals with one more match before that next week against Yangon International School. In the developmental team games, the team was allowed to use a platoon system where all 18 members of the team were able to get an equal amount of on court experience. The future of MS girls volleyball is looking prosperous.
The boys game was to be the opposite of the girls. The boys A team lost a very hard fought match 1-2. ILBC are a good team but ISY made too many unforced errors. The team is looking forward to their last friendly match next week against Yangon International School and then it will be the end of season tournament.
The boys Development team showed us all how to play basic volleyball. Making sure our serves are in and returned the ball well. ISY would win in two sets, 2-0.
Next week the teams will travel to YIS and then on Friday it is the end of season tournament. We wish our middle school volleyball players the best of luck for next week.

SEASAC Golf

SEASAC Information

SEASAC Golf

SEASAC golf was held last week for the first time in four years. ISY entered a boys and girls team for this event. Both teams were young but this means that the future of gold at ISY is strong. The boys team finished 12th and the girls team finished 8th.
In individual competition, Let Ya (grade 9) finished 11th and Cyrus (grade 12) finished 3rd. These are two very good results for two dedicated athletes.

SEASAC Arts Festival

This year sees the return of the SEASAC Arts Festival hosted by the Mont’Kiara International School and Garden International School, in Kuala Lumpur. The dates for this will be February 2, 3, and 4 (this event clashes with SEASAC basketball and touch rugby).
Students have been asked to fill in a form if they are interested in traveling and participating in the SEASAC Arts Festival. The arts festival will give the students an opportunity to experience different forms of art. The festival is for visual, performance and musical arts. The festival will be made up of explorations around the city using various art forms as a way to connect with what you are seeing, short taster sessions to engage in different art activities and longer workshops that will produce a final product or presentation. These sessions will be picked before traveling.
This will be a great opportunity to experience and try different forms of arts or explore an arts interest in more depth.
Interested students will be invited to a meeting where we will explain in further details what to expect.

What is SEASAC?
The Southeast Asian Student Activities Conference is the athletics and activities conference that ISY belongs to outside of Myanmar. Each year ISY sends students to athletic, Model United Nations conferences and arts festivals. These events are a very valuable opportunity for our students to connect with other like minded students across Southeast Asia. This section in the Athletics and Activities blog will outline some of the important information and general happenings around SEASAC events.

SEASAC Dates:
SEASAC Touch Rugby @ UWCE, February 2, 3 and 4
SEASAC Basketbal Girls @ Kuala Lumpur Alice Smith School, February 2, 3 and 4
SEASAC Basketball Boys @ NIST, February 2, 3 and 4
SEASAC Arts Festival @ GIS and MKIS, February 2, 3 and 4

YAC Football

High School Athletics

Football

On Friday the high school football teams played their last regular season game against ILBC International School.
The Girls played first against ILBC. ILBC are looking like the team to beat in this competition so this would be a tough match for our girls. ILBC has two very good players and it was the ISY game plan to shut down these two players. The ISY team stuck to their plan well and this limited ILBC’s offense. So much so that ISY were able to take the lead through a ILBC defender and goalie mix up. ISY led 1-0. ILBC then came back strong and evened the match 1-1 late in the first half.
In the second half ISY played much more attacking and showed plenty of determination to score. ILBC on the other hand played defensively. This led to ISY scoring a nice flowing goal to lead the match 2-1. However, this would not be long lived because ILBC struck a devastating kick from the kickoff to tie the scores at 2-2. This is how the game would end. This was a thoroughly deserving result for the girls and some would say they were unlucky to not win outright.

The boys played second and ILBC took the lead early on which might have shocked the spectators a little. However it did not shock our ISY boys because ISY did not lose focus and fought back and dominated the rest of the game having a number of shots on target and scoring three well worked goals and one ILBC own goal. The scores would end up 4-1 to ISY.

On Wednesday ISY hosted one semifinal of the Yangon Athletic Conference high school boys football league. This game would be played against ILBC. ISY qualified 1st and ILBC 4th. ILBC would have come to ISY looking for an upset. However, things would only go to plan for ISY. ISY Controlled the game from the start. ISY scored some well worked goals against a valiant opposition.

The girls high school football team qualified 4th, which meant that they would have to travel to International School Myanmar for their semifinal. ISM qualified 1st and were looking for an easy win to move through to the final. However, as I’ve stated before, live sport is the best drama in the world.
It did not take long for all those watching to see that this game was not going to be easy for ISM. In fact, there were a lot of scoring opportunities for the ISY girls. The scores were locked at 0-0 at halftime. The second half produced a couple of half chances for ISY and a couple of great saves by the ISY stand-in keeper. Things would progress like this through to the end of regulation time. So on the refs whistle the teams could not be separated on the scoreboard, 0-0. This means a penalty shootout!
The teams selected their first five shot takers and they all collected at halfway. Our first kick taker would also be our goalie. She must have been on a high from the couple of great saves that she had already made during the match because she calmly put the first shot in the goal. It was now her time to line up as keeper. The ISM shot taker took her shot which was saved by the ISY keeper! ISY would score the next goal and then save the ISM shot. Then ISY would miss a shot and ISM would miss theirs. This means that the scores would be 2-1. ISY missed another shot and so did ISM. The drama was high on the sidelines!
The scores were 2-1 and it was up to the last player from ISY to shoot. If she scored ISY would win 3-1, if she missed ISM could tie and we would need another round of shots. The shot was lined up and bang, the ball flew past the goalie and into the net. ISY wins!
This means that today, ISY plays in both the high school girls and boys final. These matches will be played at South Dagon field. The matches will kick off at 3:20 PM and spectators are most welcome.

Community Sport

Every Friday, there will be community football. This will start at 6:00 PM and is available for ISY community members. Parents, students, staff and alumni are all welcome. 

Another popular community sport restarting is touch rugby. This will be on Thursday evenings at 5:30 PM. This is also for parents, students, staff and alumni. 

If you are interested in playing either of these community sports please come along at the given day and time and you will be welcomed.

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After School Activities 

Thank you to all the teachers, parents, student leaders and outside helpers that have provided a wide range of activities for our students. I think there was something for everyone to try, make a difference and have fun. Also, thank you to the students that have given something new a go or continued with something they love.
The next session will start on January 29. In January, please look out for information about how to sign up and what activities are on offer in this blog as well as the Principals’ blogs and the “Friday Notices” that are sent out by email.

ISY Sports Broadcasting

Last year a sports broadcasting club was started at ISY. They were able to cover some of our high school basketball games with great success. They produced a very professionally polished product.
This year they will cover our high school athletics for the whole year. If you are interested in this please follow the link below and this will lead you to the group’s Youtube page. So far the group has covered two high school volleyball games and some of the high school basketball games from last year.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIzBh86SGxeV22RG6ZHYW2g

Swim Team

Here are the training times for our elementary, middle and high school swim teams.

ES Swim Team:
Monday, Wednesday and Friday 2:20-3:20 PM

MS and HS Swim Team:
Monday, Wednesday and Friday 3:30-5:00 PM
Tuesday and Thursday 6:45-7:45 AM

Questions or More Information

As always, if you have any questions about what is in this blog or anything else that you may think of related to activities or athletics please feel free to contact me at:

josullivan@isyedu.org

Kindest regards,

Mr. Jonathan O’Sullivan

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