Medal-winning summer
[attach]7033[/attach]It has been a busy summer of basketball for Julia Chandler, in more ways than one.
The 6-foot-2 forward, who is going into Grade 12 at Northern Secondary, has just finished up a schedule that included an under-16 FIBA tournament in Cancun, Mexico and the Canada Games in Sherbrooke, Que.
Earning a silver medal at the FIBA tournament and a gold medal with Team Ontario at the Canada Games, Chandler gave herself a week of complete rest.
“I must admit, it has been tiring because of back-to-back camps, travel, in and out of hotel rooms and several tournaments,” Chandler noted in e-mail correspondence with the Town Crier at the height of the Canada Games, “but I love to play and you find a way to work through it.”
With good coaching, and plenty of ice baths, to sort out her recovery, Chandler has quickly found her way back to the gym, focusing on strength and agility as she prepares for a busy fall schedule — both for the JUEL league (a top provincial rep league for girls basketball) and the high school season.
“It does get overwhelming, but I put myself around people who can help me through that,” she commented, post-competition. “I also think I have matured over the past few months, [so] that when it starts to get overwhelming again I will recognize the signs and be more prepared to manage my way through it.”
Jodi Gram, Chandler’s coach for both the FIBA tournament and Team Ontario, says she saw noted improvement in how Chandler took on an informal leadership role on her teams during the summer.
“It was a long summer of training and competing, but she made efforts to create a motivating and positive environment for herself and teammates by giving energy verbally and non-verbally in each [case],” said Gram, who coaches in Richmond Hill during the school year. “Fatigue is a battle for everyone, so it was never an option to use as an excuse.”
The last few months have been the product of years of devotion, says her mother, Gillian Chandler. First playing competitive basketball for North Toronto Huskies in Grade 7, her shooting and defensive skills have bloomed as she’s grown in height.
Gillian Chandler, who accompanied her daughter to Cancun, believes Julia has also grown more confident in herself as a person as she has matured, and because of that, “situations don’t faze her anymore.”
The tournament featured tough competition, some of the best under-16 girls basketball players in the western hemisphere. But Chandler, who averaged 10 points and five rebounds a game, helped Canada get past teams from Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Brazil, before losing to Team USA in the finals.
She says she is chomping at the bit to play the U.S. again next summer, at the under-17 tournament.
“Sometimes you just don’t realize how big things are and what you have achieved until after it happens,” she told the Town Crier. “Now I have great memories and experience to help me in the future.”
Gram saw Chandler take on an informal leadership role on her teams during the summer.
“She was the younger half of Team Ontario, and was an engaged follower of some of our veteran leaders, but wouldn’t shy away from offering input and leaving her mark on certain things,” Gram said.
It was a supporting role that helped Team Ontario beat up the competition at the Canada Games, going undefeated and then claiming gold against British Columbia on Aug. 17.
With the fall sessions set to begin, Chandler will have a larger role on the Northern Red Knights team that made an OFSAA appearance last fall. As well, she will now encounter better — and taller — competition in her basketball involvement.
But the right-hander is not deterred. Chandler is fervently working on her outside game as a combo guard-forward, adding three-point shooting to her practice routine lately.
Just what basketball means to her was made clear in her writing from Sherbrooke: “I cannot imagine my life without the game. I love to play. It becomes an escape from the rest of the world.”