Antrenement

Although I am the co-organizer of the Peace Corps national basketball league this year, I had ruled out coaching a team for the 2007 season. Last year, I hadn't felt necessary in "practice," which was really just a scrimmage every night. I enjoyed hanging around with the kids, but in the end, I felt that they didn't care about playing in the league and that the whole experience wasn't fulfilling to me. As I approached my second school year, in which my schedule seems more packed (maybe it's teaching 50 percent more hours and also trying to learn Russian), I had given up basketball for this year.

That was before three girls from the neighboring village of Sarata Galbena showed up outside my classroom one afternoon and offered a challenge on behalf of themselves and the boys' team. Sarata Galbena had a volunteer last year, and Casey and I organized exhibition games in each village and Peace Corps league matches in Hincesti. I told Silvia, the English-speaking team manager, that I would talk to students and see if they were interested.

When I asked the ninth and 11th graders Wednesday, they responded enthusiastically and agreed to start practicing at the gym on Thursday night (when the 11th graders already had extra sports training).

I wasn't sure how to approach this new year of basketball. I didn't want it to be laid-back like last year, but I didn't want to make it too strict. Other than sports class at English camp this summer, I had never run a sports practice, especially one in my non-native language or at such an instructional level (a ninth-grade Moldovan villager is far less skilled at basketball than an average seventh-grade American). I planned it out in my head and walked to the school gym.

At 6 p.m., I lined up the 15 boys and eight girls who had come and gave a short introduction speech. I told them that the boys who played last year and graduated had played well, but not as well as they could have. They didn't play as well as they could have, I said, because they didn't want to involve other classes in the team and because instead of learning something in practice, they just scrimmaged. At one point, at a loss for words, I said in English, "They didn't do ****. They just ****ed around." Considering that the only English words a lot of these kids understand are the curse words and my best English students are girls, this may not have been the smartest or classiest choice of words, but what's done is done. The physical education teacher also took offense quickly at my description of last years' practices, saying that I was criticizing her. Granted, I chose my words poorly, but that exact moment was not when I wanted to discuss the situation.

I started the kids with a short warm-up run around the gym. The students at my school have been trained from an early age to run in straight lines, with the tallest student leading the pack and everyone following him in order of height. I yelled to my kids, "Don't wait for Iura if he's slow. If you're faster, pass him!" A few of the boys got the message and ran at their own pace.

Then I circled the kids for stretches. You'd think it was the first time they had ever stretched in their lives. Don't they see soccer players doing it on TV and wonder what the deal is? By far the best "cultural difference" moment was when I sat on the floor of the gym to lead the butterfly stretch and told the kids to sit down. Moldovans are very superstitious about sitting on the ground or the floor; according to them, it will cool your reproductive organs and make you sterile. The boys sat down rather quickly and got into the stretching position, after I told them that their balls wouldn't freeze. The girls remained standing, and the gym teacher told them they didn't have to "sit on the cold floor." Eventually, all the girls sat on the ground, but I think they remained worried.

I ran the kids through some simple dribbling skills, and they weren't bad. No one was approaching the level of an American high school basketball player, but they were better than I expected them to be.

Then I ran them through some passing drills, working only with chest passes. As I expected, they quickly reverted to the "Overhead Chuck-and-Pray" pass that populates so much of Moldovan village basketball. Something to work on.

At this point, the first boy misbehaved. He was shooting the ball and not listening while I was talking about something to the group. I told him to do five push-ups. He looked at me incredulously, but then did then. Over the course of the first hour, I handed out a good 60 push-ups to a handful of boys and one girl. One ninth-grade boy was doing lazy push-ups that made it look like he was humping the floor. I told him I didn't want to see what he did on Saturday nights at the disco; I wanted to see a good push-up.

I then demonstrated a lay-up and formed a line at each end of the court to practice shooting lay-ups. Most of the boys seemed to get it with the need of some minor adjustments. Most of the girls, however, kept stopping right under the basket, getting set, and then shooting with both hands. Once again, something to work on.

Lastly, I showed the correct form for shooting and we practiced it. The kids reverted again to the Moldovan Overhead Chuck-and-Pray. The crazy thing is that some of these kids can consistently sink shots with the Overhead Chuck-and-Pray. Nevertheless, it's a third thing to work on.

We scrimmaged for the second hour, with four four-person groups of boys and two four-person groups of girls. My basketball standards have lowered quite a bit since I was last in America, but nevertheless I was impressed by the effort, tenaciousness and sometimes even the skill that these kids showed. They seem to really enjoy the game, and that should help motivate them to learn it better. After about 40 minutes of scrimmage, the gym teacher said that the floor was too moist and slippery for the girls to play. The boys could keep playing, but it was time for the girls to go home. I asked two of the girls who were sitting on the bench next to me why the boys could play but they couldn't. They said that boys are more careful and tougher, so they were less likely to fall and wouldn't cry if they did. I told one of them, Nadia, that I had cried when I broke my knee playing sports, and then I asked her if she had cried every time she had fallen in her life, to which she responded no.

"So saying that girls can't play now but boys can is just talk, not fact," I said. The statement amused her, perhaps doubly so because she had been to English camp and had seen me treat girls no differently from boys during sports classes.

I'm going to train these kids for a December match against Sarata Galbena, and we'll see what happens after that. Maybe they'll want to join the Peace Corps league this year, maybe not. Either way, I'm thankful that the time that I spend with them is a chance for me to know and appreciate my older students in a way that I can't during school hours. Boys who don't seem to enjoy my English or computer classes are more comfortable talking to me during basketball practice, and that comfort translates to the classroom as well. I know for a fact, however, that with my two hours of computer class, one optional English class and four hours of basketball a week with the 11th grade, I will have a much closer and meaningful relationship with them than I did with last year's 11th grade. At the very least, I already know all of their names.