How Real Coaches
Coach
Basketball
is by far the favorite sport of the Philippines. Literally every 100ft there is
some type of basketball court set up. Which is awesome because I love
basketball. But the sport is definitely dominated by boys. Right outside of the
YMC complex (where we have been living this month) there is a small basketball
court which is in use 24/7, but I have never seen a girl on it. Girls love to
play basketball too, they just aren’t given the chance. So 5 of us on M-squad
decided to make our ministry for the month coaching a girls basketball team.
Our
first day of practice we had about 6 girls show up. They could shoot, and by
shoot I mean throw the ball in the general direction of the hoop. So we started
from square one and began practicing dribbling, passing, shooting, lay-ups,
etc. After 2 days of practice, things were going pretty well and the girls had
already shown tremendous improvement, so Jeff our contact here entered our team
into a local tournament. We had about a week and a half to practice before the
tournament, and in that time our team grew from 6 to 16 girls.
As
our big tournament day approached, we realized that our girls had all been
playing barefoot or with flip flops. So we asked them to start wearing tennis
shoes to avoid injuries and so they could be used to playing in them before the
game. That is when we found out that only 4 of our girls owned a pair of rubber
shoes, and they were the 4 from the orphanage. Not one of these other kids
could afford tennis shoes, and you can buy a nice pair of kids tennis shoes
here for a bout $5. Leisa, our “head coach” started trying to get shoes
together for the rest of them. She was able to find some shoes at the orphanage
for most of the girls, and then pulling together money, went out and bought shoes
for the rest of the girls. We also found old uniforms from the school that the
kids go to, so now we were officially ready for game day.
Our
16 girls and the 5 of us piled into a van at 7:30 on Saturday morning and
headed to the school where the tournament was being held. There were 4 girls
teams playing in it. We were the first ones there, so we got to watch the other
3 teams arrive. Apparently, someone forgot to inform us that this was a high
school tournament. Why is that such a big deal? Because our girls are ages
10-15 but mainly around 12 or 13 and they are all tiny. We were playing against
girls who were taller than me.
Our
girls gave it there all. We lost our first game 1-fiftysomething. So we were
now in the losers bracket. Second game came around and there was some definite
improvement. Now that they had played one game, they were ready for the second
one, and they went out there and doubled the amount of points that they scored
from the first game. That’s right we got 2 in the second game… and only because
the other team let us shoot until we scored at the end of the game. But over
all, the score doesn’t reflect at all the amount of improvement these girls had
in just 1.5 weeks of practice. Just getting to hang out with these girls,
playing basketball, doing devotions, and just talking has been so much fun.
Part of me wishes that I could stay here in the Philippines coaching them.
We’ve only put a month into it and they look completely different then when we
got here, there is no telling what could happen if there was someone here for
long periods of time to pour into them.
