Basketball: wins for Dastur,St Mary’s

It was mixed luck for both the St. Mary’s School and the Sardar Dastur High School,with the two arch-rivals splitting the two closely- finals that they played at the Pune District Interschool Basketball Championships played at the Chandrashekar Agashe College in Gultekdi yesterday.

In the Under-17 Girls final,Dastur outplayed St.Mary’s 37-30,largely thanks to the efforts of Shruti Melan. Menon led the Dastur offense,which quickly built up a 14-1 by half time. Mary’s staged an impressive comeback in the second half,and nearly grabbed the lead thanks to the efforts of Krittika Divadkar and Ketaki Parasnis,who scored 10 points each. However,Dastur managed to hold on to their lead,and finally won by a seven-point margin.

Menon finished with 23 points,while Aditi Kamble was the second top scorer for the winning team with 5 points. St. Mary’s returned the favour in the Women’s final,but were made to fight hard by Dastur for a narrow 45-41 victory. In fact,Dastur started off on a brighter note,and led 18-17 at the halftime break.

Mary’s upped the ante in the second half,however,and the lead went back and forth before they finally won it by four points.Divadkar top scored once again,pouring in 21 points,and was well-supported by Ayushi Gupta and Namasvi Ajmera,who scored 9 and 8 points respectively.