Sounds cool, i always played with the boys basketball team, but only played i did. Then came the big teacher change just a month ago. Kamatani Sensei changed schools, so there was no girls basketball coach, so they decided to move the boys coach to the girls side, because they have been so successful in the past, always being number one, but i would have to attribute that to the coaching. So they appointed a new basketball coach to a teacher who never played basketball nor even knew anything about it. Typical japanese style, to have a coach who doesnt know anything about the sport. So of course the new coach Tomo- Sensei complained.
So i told Tomo- sensei not to worry, i would help him out. So all this week i played a bit with the kids, and changed to a bit of coaching mode. Its nice here because the kids all teach each other. So the older ones teach the younger ones. So i just tell the captain sometimes what i want, and its done.
Anyways, my boys team is nice, maybe a bit too nice, heck i dont think they have won a game for 3 seasons or so, no joke. Hoping they could win, i prepped them with defense, because all of them could at least steal the ball or rebound at least. Shooting was another story. So all i taught them was rebounding and stealing for the week before the game. Then prayed.
It was a two day tournament, but of course work is fucking crazy and I had to go to elementary school that day of course. So after i was finished with the little ones i sped home and drove over to the basketball game. Got there just in time to see the 2nd half. Lucky i didnt see more, because it was an awful masacare. The score was like 30-80 in the end, and we werent the winners.
Day two, 2 games left. Ouch, got killed even more, unbelieveable, this team was good. They were shooting like 75%. They were too quick for my kids, guess why that score was like ... 30 - _ _ _ we will just say it was somewhere in the triple digits.
Anyways, fight-O! During the break, the head coach is pretty cool, and suggested to go give the players advice. I took each one of the starters and corrected them on things such as "getting tight on defense", "rebound", "screen out", "steal (cut-o in japanese)" of course i cant speak japanese well, so i had to gesture, point out examples from other games going on, and use katakana words they know like "touch". I was like just go in there and touch em, pressure, push em, foul em. These kids arent used to fouling, it alright to do, in America we love fouling, i mean thats why you got 5 fouls to give. We gotta do that to win. I had visions of coach Karl, Dean, and other greats, what would they do in this situation? All those times watching those NCAA game on TV started popping up like popcorn.
It was onto the next game. Game 3, this was our chance, because this team wasnt as good as the others. So i was praying just like a Disney movie, like the "Mighty Ducks" or something like that. When the game started, amazingly it was close, and i could see the smiles on my kids, they were starting to believe they could do it. The defense was improving. By halftime they were up by a couple. So i told em to keep the defense up. But when the 3rd quarter started, they got rattled by the other team putting up 8 straight points. Then Tomo-sensei called a timeout. He dont know basketball, but he is smart, and knows timing. Amazing man! So we re-grouped and turned up the defense, half court D became full court. Then all of a sudden like at the peak of the Disney movie, the rebounds, steals, and points started coming in. I was thinking like we were the Detroit Pistons, defense wins games. It started all becoming natural for them, and everytime they came back to the bench they were happy rather than sulking. At the end we won by 20 or so points! It was a good day!!!! One of my highlights in Japan by far ...
No comments:
Post a Comment