basketball

So, it is late here, close to midnight and my roommates are in their apartament fast asleep because they both have stuff to do tomorrow. But me, I am livin' large. We have had an absolutely ridiculous streak of power lately. There has been island power everynight since Tuesday (it is now Friday, almost Saturday) and the power is still on. I don't have anything to do tomorrow, so I figured why not stay up, write a blog and then maybe make some phone calls. It is a wild night here in Chuuk.
Well, although our season does not officially start until November 4 (that would be Nov. 3 for those of you back home in the States) the coach at Xavier is a JV and we decided to have a scrimmage. Naturally a couple stories came out of it.

First, a little background on Xavier, it is the premier high school in Micronesia. Kids from all over attend Xavier. They have students from all 4 states in the FSM, students from Palau, the Marshall Islands, probably Kiribati and I am sure more. The boys board at the school and the girls stay with host families. Their coach had been having two-a-days for a week and we had 3 practices in 3 weeks due to various cancellations. But lately we have been practicing consistently and I am relatively pleased with our progress. I have been teaching them a man-to-man defense. This is particularly difficult because everyone on the islands plays zone. A great example illustrating how hard this is to coach is that they did not know how to match up during the start of the game. So we came out and no one knew who they were guarding. It was my fault for not teaching them this, but it never occurred to me.

So Josh called me Wednesday night and told me he was taking his team down to play at Saramen (my school) on Thursday. This was perfect because we have use of the full gym on Thursday and we don't have to share with the girls' team. Well Xavier did not show up until 4 pm, which was stressful for me because my students walk home and after dark in Chuuk is not safe for them, as many teachers took the liberty of telling me what felt like several hundered times as we waited for Xavier. Josh and I decided to play two 10 minute halves stopping the clock at dead balls. We also decided that we - Josh and I - would call the fouls. Now my natural tendency is to let the kids play, I feel that it builds mental toughness, teaches them to play through the whistle and not rely on the refs. I think Josh and I differ on this view.

Warning: this next section contains basketball jargon please skip if you do not feel like reading that!

The brand of defense I have been trying to teach the kids is a physical and aggressive man-to-man style defense with a lot of help. I encourage them to play physically especially against cutters and screeners. Apparently this is a new concept on the island. But the kids have taken to it and are doing very well and learning very quickly.

After a few posessions the guys figured out who they were guarding and looked like a basketball team. Then the whistles started. Josh called a reach in foul and I rolled my eyes. Then, in the same possession, he called another and I bit my tongue. Then his "star" player drove into the lane, out of control, jumped not knowing what the hell he was going to do with the ball and threw it away. Josh called another foul here. I, as calmy as I could, told him that I felt that was an unfair call... I believe "chicken shit" was the phrase... and explained that I view basketball as a contact sport and I did not feel that my players breathing on his constituted a foul.
We jumped on them by about 12 points early on and Josh eased up on his whistle. The half ended and we had about a 4 or 6 point lead. I subbed out my starters and put in the 2nd group. I decided we should split the time between the players because it was only a scrimmage and everyone needed the experience. Josh did, during the intermission, explain that he thought we should call the game a little tighter several times.

The second half started and Xavier showed us their half court trap, which worked for a few possessions and tied up the game. But we continued to play solid defense and subpar offense and Josh continued to voice his opinion that we needed to call a tighter game. Like I said earlier, I did not call much of anything, either way, for the reasons stated above and also because I don't really worry about the refs. There is nothing I can do to change their call, and their word is the law, so unless I see something blatant I just assume we had a liberal ref.

Well the game was tight and getting down to the wire. I was a little competitive. One of my roommates asked me when the game was going to get over midplay and I snapped at her. I knew that she was alluding to the fact that our kids needed time to walk home while it was still light but I did not have to be hear all of that again. Xavier had offered to give them a ride up the road, so that solved the problem. So, poor Jesse caught my short side. Shortly after this incident Josh expressed that he thought we should call the game tighter and I, as calmy and tranquilly as possible, explained that if he took his pacifier out and his whistle out of a certain orophus (spelling?) he could call whatever he wanted. This little quip warranted several comments from teachers and students the next day at school, apparently I was excited. I like to use the word passionate.
Well, regulation ended in a tie. I put my starters back in and we decided to play a 5 minute over time. We both scored a few times and the game ended 28-28. Josh and I decided to call it at that.

, I was happy with the game. We have not even put in an offense yet, but our defense looked very good. I like to think of it like the kind of defense that Lincoln High School ran when coach Kelly was there. It is that physical brand of basketball. Though we are young, they are coming around.

Now I would like to add another disclaimer: Josh I am sure would argue that we are hackers who grabbed and pushed his kids at every chance we got. Just know that because I am the one writing this, the story is biased.
After that I went home and caught a ride up to my new host family's house. We had dinner and I recieved a Chuukese lesson. We talked for a few hours, then I went to bed and slept like a baby. It was a very good day, but I did feel stressed.

I have only been on the island for two months and I am the new guy. I like being the new guy because I get some room to make mistakes and such. But it can also be frusterating at times, like when 800 people tell me that the kids need to get home before dark. Or, for instance, after the game was over I had three people tell me 6 times in the span of maybe two minutes that we needed to get everyone out of the gym and lock up. Then they continued to remind me even after I said that I would take care of it and started collecting the balls and herding the kids out. Going to the host family's was the most welcome of breaks.

My host family is the secretary at Saram. Her, her husband, and son have taken me in and have been so wonderful. They always feed me and are giving me Chuukese lessons. This is absolutely clutch because the girls (Jesse and Caitlin) decided that this year they did not think that our community as a whole should have a Chuukese tutor like they did last year. So we were all on our own. This was a little difficult for me because I had only been here two months and didn't know enough people, or know them well enough, to feel comfortable asking them to help me with the language. But the host family has been awesome. I really feel like I am making progress.

OK, that's enough for now. Thanks for reading and I'll try to write more soon.

pictures up

so i am uploading some pictures to www.snapfish.com.  username = mmille14@gonzaga.edu password = mm7841.

hopefully they will go up and you all can enjoy, please don't steal them though (that one goes out to the JVI office, in particular).