About 2 weeks ago during our normal U19 basketball morning training, we got the news that the Adelaide 36ers men’s basketball team would be in town and training at our school with us. For those who don’t know the 36ers are a professional basketball team in the Australian Basketball League, and they have had in fact very good players who have found success in the NCAA (American college) field as well as the NBA. We got the chance to train with their two head coaches who were ex-NBA players! As well as being taught by the pros themselves, Mitchell Creek (the captain squatting on the right in blue), and another player called Soby. They both played for the Utah Jazz summer league team this year (in the NBA, highest form of pro basketball in the world). I learned a lot from our session with this team, of course, in terms of new skills and moves with the drills we conducted, they made it clear that it did not matter if you were finding it hard or messing up on the pass for example, as long as you were putting in that practice into it, the only way to learn and move forward is through making those mistakes. It was a very good workout for the team. I also realised how loud they were as a team and the importance of talking and giving positive feedback during practice to all your own teammates(LO5), and I saw how important it was in building team chemistry and bonding as a group, and making all the players actively engaged with each other and supporting each other at the practice, something we at East Basketball need to incorporate more in our own sessions to create that culture.(LO5)Another thing I picked up was that these guys were complete professionals, this was their life and their job and they never did anything without giving it full focus. They are at this level of basketball because of their commitment and their work ethic throughout their lives which has brought them here today. I saw them and I also wanted to have that similar attitude in my own life, related to basketball and outside it as well. I learned that we must be willing to put in that extra effort for anything we do in order to achieve success at it. Overall, it was a really cool experience to have the chance to train and learn with a professional team like the 36ers, and i hope we can have more of these in the future.