A look-back on the IFGs

David Chappell

Photo by Pareen Chaudhari

A successful free throw from the business faculty brought the basketball final on Friday, Sept. 17 and the IFGs to a nail biting conclusion. Yet, while Yale-NUS College may have narrowly missed out on victory in the closely fought 42-40 game, their performance in the IFGs as a whole was a resounding success.

Despite only competing in 16 of the 24 events and going up against faculties nearly 20 times their size, Yale-NUS emerged sixth at the end of the competition, championing dodgeball and placing second in both basketball and reversi. This impressive achievement can largely be attributed to two factors: the dedication of the students and the Yale-NUS spirit embodied by all of them. Similarly, these factors can be considered achievements in themselves, as summed up by Rakesh Prabhakaran ’17 when he said, “sports competitions are a good way to prove our skill, but they’re a better way to prove our spirit.”

Truly, Yale-NUS would not have done as well if it had not been for the level of participation from all the students. A large proportion of Yale-NUS’s body of students donned their blue and orange shirts to practice regularly, even at a really busy time of the year. It says a lot that, despite a general lack of training facilities, competitors were still willing to show up and give it their all. As Prabhakaran, a competitor in both dodgeball and men’s basketball, noted, “there were times when Tchoukball trained from 10pm to midnight, and many times when teams were waiting for the MPH to free up.”

Similarly, Yale-NUS’s spirit vastly outshone that of other faculties, both from supporters and competitors. All the teams showed humility in both victory and defeat and all fought to the bitter end. The community, likewise turned up in droves for every event, culminating in the basketball final where Yale-NUS support outnumbered that of business’s two to one.

BY THE NUMBERS: