126 First Day

Shun stood in a huge gym in the UCLA facilities. There were six basketball courts in that one huge gym.

There were a lot of people in the gym. Shun could see people from all around the world.

Shun: "Woah, this gym sure is huge and look at all these people here."

Shun looked behind and smiled at the group that consisted of Shun, Ming, Bruno, Douglas, Roger, and Rafael.

Shun had invited Bruno and Douglas to the outing yesterday, so today, they decided to come to the gym together.

Roger looked at Bruno and asked.

Roger: "Were there this many people last time as well?"

Bruno glanced at Roger and nodded.

Bruno: "Not all of these people got invited because they fulfilled the criteria. The host country of the training camp is allowed to invite a specific amount of athletes that don't meet the guidelines.

Last time the camp was in Australia, so many players from all around Australia participated in the event."

Roger nodded and replied

Roger: "That makes sense."

After a while, they heard a yell from one group of people that everybody could deduce were the coaches of this camp.

Coach ???: "Gather Up!"

The players in the gym moved to gather in front of the group of coaches.

One of the coaches stepped forward from the group and addressed the players.

Coach A: "Good Morning to everybody here, and before we start anything, I would like to welcome all of you to this year's FIBA International Youth Development Camp.

I hope you guys are well-rested and have adjusted to your accommodations. UCLA was generous enough to rent out the entire dorm building and a good portion of their facilities to us for this camp. So, please don't cause any problems for them.

Remember that you're representing your countries, and any misbehavior would affect the reputation of your country.

We are here to play and learn, so let's do that. So, when you exit your rooms every day, leave anything that is unnecessary behind and focus on basketball."

He smiled at the players and then continued.

Coach A: "Now, I would like to call forward Head Coach Albert Hamilton to speak."

[A/N: Coach Albert Hamilton has the same appearance as the Haikyuu character, Ukai Ikkei (Coach Ukai, Ukai Sr.)

The link will be in the comments.]

An old coach who looked to be in his sixties stepped forward. He gazed at all of the players with a serious face and spoke.

Albert Hamilton: "Good Morning. I am sure you all are excited to be here and don't want to listen to a speech from someone old like me.

This camp will be fun, and you will learn a lot if you try, but it won't be easy.

Especially if you get sorted into Division-One under me, I will work you guys to the bone.

This camp will be hell, but the result would be comparable to heaven if you endure and apply yourselves.

That will be all for me. We will be starting with the physical tests shortly."

-*-*-*-*-*-*-

For the sorting test, the players were all assigned a number to which they would respond during the test.

Shun received his number tag, and the number on it was fifty-six.

Shun looked at the group and asked.

Shun: "What did you get? I am no. 56."

One by one, they revealed their numbers.

Ming: "no. 55"

Douglas: "no. 53"

Roger: "no. 51"

Bruno: "no. 54"

Rafael just showed his tag and didn't voice out the number. The tag said no. 52.

Shun looked at all the tags and said.

Shun: "I go at the end, huh."

-*-*-*-*-*-*-

As Coach Albert had said, the first part of the test was an athletic test.

First were body measurements.

A FIBA personal called Shun, and he proceeded to a corner of the gym.

The FIBA personal pointed at one of the equipments that was set up and said.

FIBA Personal: "Please stand there; we will measure your height."

Shun recognized the equipment. It was a stadiometer. He had seen it in his school, father's clinic, and at the hospital, his mother worked in.

The machine was simply a ruler and a sliding horizontal headpiece, which is adjusted to rest on the top of the head.

The personal looked at measurement and stated.

FIBA Personal: "183 centimeters."

Next was the weight. Shun stepped on a weight scale and stood up straight.

The personal jotted down the number on the scale and told Shun.

FIBA Personal: "70 kg."

Shun had a pretty high metabolism from eating healthy and exercising at a high level every day. His lifestyle, which was a combination of sports and healthy living habits, had made it difficult for Shun to gain weight.

Shun ran around the court a lot every day to be ready for both offense and defense, plus he stayed late every day to train more, this didn't allow Shun to put on weight.

If Shun wanted to gain weight, then he would have to change his diet and work more on the physical exercises that would guarantee muscle gain.

But currently, Shun didn't have any intention of gaining weight in muscle or fat.

Next, they measure Shun's wingspan, hand length, and hand width for ball grip, standing reach, and BMI.

Calipers at eight-points on the body were used to take in skinfold measurements to find out BM.

[A/N: I am not putting them into numbers because it is a pain.]

-*-*-*-*-*-

After physical measurements, the time was for an actual test of athletism.

The tests included standing and maximum vertical jump, measured on a vertec.

The Vertec was one of the most common apparatus for measuring vertical jump ability. It was the vertical jump-testing device of choice for many college and professional teams.

It was of steel frame construction with horizontal vanes that are rotated out of the way by the hand to indicate the height reached.

After vertical reach, was bench press measurement which was followed by, three-quarter-court sprint time, lane agility time, and modified event time.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-

Shun returned from his physical assessment and asked others about their scores.

Shun: "How did you guys do?"

All six of them compared scores, and Shun noticed the difference between him and high schoolers.

Shun lost to everybody except Ming in the vertical jump, both standing and with a run-up.

Shun lost in the bench press to everyone, Shun might have the explosiveness to force the ball in, but he didn't have the endurance to keep up the reps on a bench press.

In speed events, Shun matched with Roger and Ming, he won against Douglas and lost to Rafael and Bruno.

Shun sighed as he scratched the back of his head.

Shun: 'And, this is only tests in a controlled environment. In an actual game, the results would be worse than this.'

Douglas slapped Shun's back and laughed.

Douglas: "Don't worry about the small stuff."

-*-*-*-*-*-*-

Shun redeemed himself in the shooting test. Everybody had to shoot regardless of their preferred position.

They had to shoot from the mid-range, three-point line, shooting off the dribble and timed jump shots on the move.

Shun made a hundred percent of his mid-range shots, both catch-and-shoot and off-the-dribble, and timed ones.

On three-point shots, Shun managed to make all of his catch-and-shoot, he missed one off-the-dribble, and one of his timed ones.

He almost had two misses in the timed three-pointer, but because Shun always a good amount of backspin on the ball, it bounced on the rim, but it went because of the backspin.

-*-*-*-

Douglas missed all but one three-pointer, and that was a catch-and-shoot. He scored fifty percent from mid-range.

Rafael was bad at shooting and scored worse than Douglas and didn't make a single three-pointer and scored forty-five percent from mid-range.

Roger only made three three-pointers, one from each category, and made sixty-five percent of his mid-range shots.

Bruno made seventy percent of his mid-range shots but missed all of his three-pointers.

Ming scored thirty percent from three-pointer range and made seventy-five percent from mid-range.

So, when it came to shooting, Shun wiped the floor clean with everyone else. But, at the same time, none of them were shooting guards or even small forwards.

Even Ming stated that he was a supportive point guard rather than an offensive-type.