Chapter 12: Basketball at the Hac, and other places
We started to play a lot of hoops at the stone floor court in the hacienda. The girls and I would come down from Las Rosas and we would get the guys from the hacienda, maybe 12 or 13 of us total, a good three times a week. It was great. I had a lot of fun playing with Adalid, both on the same side of the ball and opposite teams. I started to learn the meaning of “home court advantage” as they already knew the nuances of the court, the bad places to dribble, the weak backboards you could easily chuck the ball at and the soft rims giving only short rebounds. Playing on the semi flat stone surface didn’t help my game much either.
Rogelio started to invite friends. I was a little sketched out at first, but they were all pretty nice guys, and we got to know each other well. The girls would usually bow out just to watch, as the new guys would come and demand that we bet on the game. “Just for a Coke” they said. That now put meaning into the game, and I turned on the jets. I don’t remember if I even lost, but I know I never helped buy Coke so either I never lost or my team covered it for me. But I am pretty sure it is the former. Being a meter and 89 centimeters tall doesn’t hurt either among an opposing team that is an average of a meter 58.
I learned a fun trick too. One of the rims was bent on one side, so if I just lined up on that side, called for the ball, it almost always fell. As long as you got it over the first lip, the backside of the rim was sure to ease the ball into the net. Almost foolproof.
They started inviting me to play with them on the weekends. I really had not a lot to do, unless I was going to hang out with Adalid, so I went with them as much as I could.
I specifically remember three times. We played a lot but three specific games come to mind the most. The first was the very first game they invited me to. We played in a four team tournament in a court alongside the highway just outside of town. There were two speed bumps on the highway to keep cars from flying through the pueblo, the first set heading out of San Felipe towards the hacienda. It was the first game where I poured all I had into it. The first two games were fun (the two in which we won the tourney) except that I was getting extremely tired. Rogelio and his friends who I played with are mostly in their late thirties, and wanted me to stay on the floor. Even though I had been here for a while, I hadn’t really ever ran consistently or anything, and wasn’t really in shape. And being up in the mountains just killed me. I begged to come out but they said I was better playing half the floor, not getting back on defense at all, than any of them were. The third game of the day was a killer though, as the “coach” from one of the teams demanded we put all the best players from the other teams together to play against our team. Which we did, and my ego kept me in the game. But the “coach” had the idea to stop me by putting two guys on me and absolutely hammering me every time I touched the ball. If this had been at the intramural building during my previous year at college I would have been obligated to beat them down. But I was pretty new to town still, I didn’t know any of them, and really didn’t want problems. I mostly just took it and threw elbows at opportune times. Which took some of them out of the game, trying to keep up on defense, but since it were one team comprised up of three, they just put more substitutes in one after the other. We didn’t win that one just because I came out after a quarter from sheer exhaustion.
The second most memorable game is one that we went way up into the mountains to play. We were Rogelio, me, his friend Elias, a couple other buddies I didn’t really know, and one other kid name Matu. Matu was pretty fast, if not that great of a shot, and was pretty smart. We played against a team that had exactly two players worth anything, who were both pretty good (as in they both can dunk which is rare for here). To make a long story short, we beat them playing a triangle and two defense, I playing man to man defense on the larger of the two, and Matu going up against the shorter. The other three played a triangle zone. We shut them down, and since the two better players tried to avoid passing the ball to their teammates as much as possible, they couldn’t do anything and we won. They were so sure they were going to win (also with a “coach” who does nothing), it made me even happier to beat them.
The third game is just a pick up game we played up in Portes Gil, where most of them live. It was really the first game I played where I could run full speed and play the whole game, after a good few months of living here. It was just funny because they knocked me to the ground and I totally scraped my arm. I had a bleeding hole like the size of a half-dollar. I went to the store to get something to clean it up with, because it was bleeding decently. The old lady gave me some home remedy that I splashed on there and wiped off. It worked pretty good, but I still had toilet paper held to the spot. “Get back in here!” they kept yelling at me. Which was funny to me because in these days of not letting kids play if they are bleeding, I am used to the idea that bleeding equals you simply don’t play. That is how it has been since… since I can remember. If you are bleeding you are treated like you are playing with leprosy. But they forced me back into the game, even though I bled on three different guys’ shirts, but we did win in overtime. The wife of one of my buddies volunteered to wash our shirts. Which was nice of her. Since I don’t know how to get blood out of a shirt anyway. Turns out all you need is a little stiff bristle brush. Who knew?
Rogelio started to invite friends. I was a little sketched out at first, but they were all pretty nice guys, and we got to know each other well. The girls would usually bow out just to watch, as the new guys would come and demand that we bet on the game. “Just for a Coke” they said. That now put meaning into the game, and I turned on the jets. I don’t remember if I even lost, but I know I never helped buy Coke so either I never lost or my team covered it for me. But I am pretty sure it is the former. Being a meter and 89 centimeters tall doesn’t hurt either among an opposing team that is an average of a meter 58.
I learned a fun trick too. One of the rims was bent on one side, so if I just lined up on that side, called for the ball, it almost always fell. As long as you got it over the first lip, the backside of the rim was sure to ease the ball into the net. Almost foolproof.
They started inviting me to play with them on the weekends. I really had not a lot to do, unless I was going to hang out with Adalid, so I went with them as much as I could.
I specifically remember three times. We played a lot but three specific games come to mind the most. The first was the very first game they invited me to. We played in a four team tournament in a court alongside the highway just outside of town. There were two speed bumps on the highway to keep cars from flying through the pueblo, the first set heading out of San Felipe towards the hacienda. It was the first game where I poured all I had into it. The first two games were fun (the two in which we won the tourney) except that I was getting extremely tired. Rogelio and his friends who I played with are mostly in their late thirties, and wanted me to stay on the floor. Even though I had been here for a while, I hadn’t really ever ran consistently or anything, and wasn’t really in shape. And being up in the mountains just killed me. I begged to come out but they said I was better playing half the floor, not getting back on defense at all, than any of them were. The third game of the day was a killer though, as the “coach” from one of the teams demanded we put all the best players from the other teams together to play against our team. Which we did, and my ego kept me in the game. But the “coach” had the idea to stop me by putting two guys on me and absolutely hammering me every time I touched the ball. If this had been at the intramural building during my previous year at college I would have been obligated to beat them down. But I was pretty new to town still, I didn’t know any of them, and really didn’t want problems. I mostly just took it and threw elbows at opportune times. Which took some of them out of the game, trying to keep up on defense, but since it were one team comprised up of three, they just put more substitutes in one after the other. We didn’t win that one just because I came out after a quarter from sheer exhaustion.
The second most memorable game is one that we went way up into the mountains to play. We were Rogelio, me, his friend Elias, a couple other buddies I didn’t really know, and one other kid name Matu. Matu was pretty fast, if not that great of a shot, and was pretty smart. We played against a team that had exactly two players worth anything, who were both pretty good (as in they both can dunk which is rare for here). To make a long story short, we beat them playing a triangle and two defense, I playing man to man defense on the larger of the two, and Matu going up against the shorter. The other three played a triangle zone. We shut them down, and since the two better players tried to avoid passing the ball to their teammates as much as possible, they couldn’t do anything and we won. They were so sure they were going to win (also with a “coach” who does nothing), it made me even happier to beat them.
The third game is just a pick up game we played up in Portes Gil, where most of them live. It was really the first game I played where I could run full speed and play the whole game, after a good few months of living here. It was just funny because they knocked me to the ground and I totally scraped my arm. I had a bleeding hole like the size of a half-dollar. I went to the store to get something to clean it up with, because it was bleeding decently. The old lady gave me some home remedy that I splashed on there and wiped off. It worked pretty good, but I still had toilet paper held to the spot. “Get back in here!” they kept yelling at me. Which was funny to me because in these days of not letting kids play if they are bleeding, I am used to the idea that bleeding equals you simply don’t play. That is how it has been since… since I can remember. If you are bleeding you are treated like you are playing with leprosy. But they forced me back into the game, even though I bled on three different guys’ shirts, but we did win in overtime. The wife of one of my buddies volunteered to wash our shirts. Which was nice of her. Since I don’t know how to get blood out of a shirt anyway. Turns out all you need is a little stiff bristle brush. Who knew?
posted by Patrick McEvoy at 2:53 PM
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