This morning I had to once again get up early to coach my U-15 team. Mwape picked me up and we went over to Napsa (a sports complex where there is an outdoor basketball court). The court isn’t in great shape and one of the hoops is so bent that it gives a clear advantage to the team shooting at the other hoop for that half. There was one game before my team played it’s semi-final against Sport In Action’s team. During that game a TV station’s news crew showed up to cover some of the tournament. They approached me and asked if they could interview me. I thought that they should talk to some of the players or perhaps Mwape because he had been running the entire tournament. However their reply to that was, “it’s always nice to have a new face on camera.” Basically they were interested in talking to me because I was white, but they agreed to talk to Mwape as well after I insisted. They interviewed me for about 5 minutes, not giving me any prep ahead of time on the questions they were going to ask. I thought I spoke fine so I wasn’t worried, and I also talked up my team saying how good they were. Looks like I jinxed them. We ended up losing to SIA in the semis by 8. It was as if I was coaching a completely different team, they couldn’t seem to get their act together at all. I was pretty upset, so I didn’t stay long to watch the other games. I walked to Arcades to meet Chrissy and Francis at the market and do some souvenir shopping.
I was at the market until about 3 o’clock and managed to buy and trade clothes for some pretty cool crafts. Chrissy and I both had a lot of luck trading our things and getting good deals on the crafts we wanted. Then I walked back over to the sports complex ZamSure where my senior team would be playing. When I got there I couldn’t even find the whole team. This means that they weren’t changed and they weren’t warming up – already a bad sign. The other team, the Heroes, had been warming up on the outside courts for a while. Since my team wasn’t ready and were rushing to get warmed up I never got to give them a pre-game pep talk. Coach Robert only showed up about 30 minutes before the game stared so it’s not like he was setting a good example for them.
The game started off pretty well. When players were taken out of the game I pulled them aside to tell them what they had done wrong and how to improve it. At half time the game was tied but we had the edge on the intensity. After the half the game continued in our favor. One of the players, Zawa, started to have a really great game and was scoring a ton. He isn’t always good from the line but I had been working with him on his foul shots and his confidence. He got fouled on a 3-pointer and as he went to the line I got his attention and said “just like in practice, 100%.” He nodded, and then proceeded o hit all 3 shots. Another player, Mengo, was playing really well, and hit 2 amazing 3-pointers, one of which was about 5 feet outside the line. We were up by 12 and the team on the bench and the crowd were going nuts. Joshua, one of our best players, had been having an off game so he had been on the bench for a while. I had been talking to him a lot on the sidelines and as soon as he got back into the game he hit a 3. Then, the game slowly started going downhill. My team started getting complacent. They were lazy on defense and overly confident with their offensive attempts and it all backfired. My players also started fouling, and not just a few of the players, but all of them. Not sure how this happened by one by one they started fouling out, starting with out two leading scorers. That just brought the team down. Then we had more turnovers than I can even count, and these were all converted into baskets off fast breaks from the Heroes. We called a timeout and I explained to them that they just needed to be patient on offense and hold the ball. This gym doesn’t have a shot clock because it had broken, so teams can keep the ball on offense for as long as they want. I find this to be ridiculous, but if that’s how it is than we should use it to our advantage. I told them not to shoot the ball, and only to drive on open lay-ups. They just didn’t listen. And what did they do? They shot the ball. This resulted in more points for the other team and us fouling over and over. I can’t even explain how this happened, but with 4 minutes to go our 6th player fouled out and we had no one left to put in. This left us with 4 players on the court – fantastic. I was just so embarrassed and found it to be absolutely ridiculous. Luckily one of our players who had shown up really late was on the bench and he ran to change into a uniform. We got him in the game with 2 minutes to go, and at this point we were only leading by a basket. It was a depressing last few minutes and we ended up losing by 2 points. I couldn’t even understand it. Never in my life have I seen that many players on one team foul out. I was both upset and really pissed off, we had somehow completely fallen apart and lost a 12-point lead. I was definitely not friendly when talking to them after the game. I told them to remember how they are feeling right now because they should never want to feel like that again.
After I left I went to meet Chrissy back at Arcades and we had dinner at Mint Lounge. This brought my spirits back up a little because we had a full and delicious meal with drinks, dinner, cake for dessert, and lattes.
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