Milos (my initial contact), Surdan (the jr. national team physical therapist, and Dragos (the national team coach) and I on my last night in Uzice after a workout in the park.
The last few days of basketball have been really amazing. The team that I was connected with was OKK Uzice. It has players all the way from 8 to a professional team. What I didn't know, was that coach Dragos pictured in my previous post is also an assistant coach for the Macedonian National Team and a Junior National Team who has won gold medals in world junior competitions. It is crazy how God works that the auto mechanic for our YWAM contact has a brother who coaches basketball who then introduced me to the other coaches he works with and suddenly I was able to attend practices that a national team coach holds. God is cool.
I always go into international coaching situations trying to remain a learner. It kills the stereotype that Americans think they know everything and I do firmly believe that I have a lot to learn as a coach from coaches in the U.S. and around the world. My first few days of practice I spent much of my time just trying to assist in drills and coach when I saw something glaringly obvious. As hard as it was for me, I really try to keep my mouth shut unless asked and then to be very complementary. But, as time passed, my opportunities became greater and greater. By the last day, I was so thankful for all of my training and experiences in the United States as I was able to share about some training things we do that the coaches had only read about. I was able to explain and demonstrate dynamic warm-up and talk about some different drills we do for player development and to prevent injury.
I laughed as probably 50 times on my last night they lamented the fact that they wished they had known I was in Uzice earlier. That was funny as Chris called Milos my first week in the country, but at that point they really didn't take it seriously.
The great thing for long-term opportunities is that I have an open invitation to return at any point. They would also like to see a partnership develop with teams from the US travelling to Serbia to do training camps and teams from Serbia travelling to the US. This is very similar to what Athletes in Action did in the Czech Republic when I was there and is still doing. I'd love to see that develop so that the seeds sown in regards to the gospel this past week would have more time to grow.
