March is finally here, and that means that life gets a little more exciting! The regular season of basketball is over, and my team, Sállen Basket, finished in the fourth spot. Northland from Luleå finished first, Norrköping Dolphins finished second, and UDominate from Umeå finished third. We are tied points-wise with Umeå, but since they beat us in two very close games, the third spot belongs to them. Out of the 10 teams in the league, the top 8 make it to the playoffs. The first team faces the 8th team, the second team faces the 7th team and so on in the quarter finals. Since we finished fourth, we are facing fifth team Telge from Södertälje. Its a best-of-3 series which means that whichever team wins two games first, moves on to the semi finals. Since we ended in a better position than Telge, we get home court advantage, so the first game was played at our gym at Rosendahl in Uppsala. With the help of around 600 fans, we were able to win a very aggressive game by 10 points. On Wednesday we will travel to Telge to try and steal the game and move into the semi finals.
Not only is basketball intense right now, but the Gladiatorerna craze has started. The challengers of this coming season are getting extremely excited and are posting their episode dates and pictures from the taping. Commercials and advertisements have started to run on channel 4 and on posters in the subway and train stations. The first episode airs on Saturday, March 15th. This season promises to bring extremely competitive events, along with a much more entertaining show, with more time dedicated to what happens before and after the event. I think that the Gladiators are better than ever this coming season, so the challengers will really have to prove their worth in the arena.
It will be a tough month balancing basketball, working at Balance as a PT, training my clients through my own company, and enjoying Gladiatoererna. Having all of these jobs makes me happy, so I look forward to see what this month will bring. If you have nothing to do on Wednesday, come support my team against Telge at Täljehallen at 19.00!!!
Pics from the first quarter Final game. (photographer is Carola Hellström. Check out her website at carolahellstrom.se)
