the big basketball week

Wow, a week with out blogging. i'm sorry guys. i hope you haven't gotten tired of checking the blog and there not being anything new. well, i should write your eyes off with this one.

what a week. just amazing. this was the big week that we even had a preparatory week only for it. 200 kids in the camp, a team of 26 americans coming down. basketball camp in the morning, basketball camp in the afternoon and basketball games at night. basketball basketball basketball. i now believe more than ever that God is down here.

i was orginally going to be a facilitator running around with Will to check on the five courts spread out through the city, but then at the last moment before the team came one of the guys dropped out and i was assigned to be a coach of a team for the week. there were 5 divisions with 4 teams in each division. the divisions were the NBA for 18 years and up, the dominican pro league for 15 to 17, college for 13 and 14 years, and the little man league for 12 and under and i don't think there were supposed to be kids under 10. oh, and the fifth division was the girls division. it was a hundred pesos to get into the league (which is about 3 dollars) and they get a nice bag and a good ball at the end of the week. that was all brought by the americans. i think there is a NIKE rep that donated the balls. i was a coach in the little man division. each team had a different color in their division. red, blue, yellow and green. my team was green. and they were incredible. they weren't the best players ever, even though a few of them were pretty good, but what i loved about them most was that they were good kids. i really tried to be positive in everything i did and said and i believe that they saw that and followed suit. they really worked as a team. as an example, one morning when all the little man teams got to their court for the day we sent the teams to different parts of the court and i was talking with another coach for a second, when i looked over my guys had organized lay up lines and were practicing lay ups. i was so blown away. i saw my best player encouraging my worst player when he missed a shot. i was so blessed.

every morning this week started for me with breakfast with the american team, and then to the main court, club benito juarez, at 8 to 8:30. there the entire camp would have announcements a small message and worship. then each division would walk to its court. there we would have stations to teach dribbling, defense, shooting and passing. there would also be team competitions and individual competitions. my team won every team competition in our division. at the end of the week ribbons were given to the teams and my team got all of the ribbons. and a bunch of my players won some of the individual competitions. my best player was also a big help to me. he would try and understand what i was telling the team to do and then he would tell everyone what to do. his name was jose argeni (hose-ay ar-heh-knee) but i had another jose so i just called him argeni all week. it was his idea, hahaha. what a great kid. i really love him. i also had a couple other good players. one was richard, he was a haitian and he could dribble really well and he was really quiet. the other good player was jean marcus something. that's 4 players if you count the other jose, who was a little bit of a troubled child. he had trouble learning the memory verses and sometimes with getting along but another blessing that i had and i believe also it was because i tried to keep a positive attitude was that all the other coaches said constantly all week that my team had the best attitude as a whole. so argeni, richard, marcus, jose and the other four were jeuri, a really short guy who was really passionate, edgar who was a sweet little kid that kept forgetting to play defense and always begged to not be subbed out, wilson, who wasn't the skinniest kid but had a great attitude and memorized the most verses, and lastly, cristofer who was my youngest, tallest and most bothersome child. he constantly asked if he could go in. but not every few minutes, not once in a while, but constantly every three seconds. touching my arm, can i go in, can i go in, can i go in. it was in spanish but it was easy enough to understand. and then when i would put him, he would keep asking, am i in? am i in? do you mean me? OH MY GOODNESS KID, YES!!!!!! he wasn't good either, but he taught me a few things. i kept him telling him he had to play defense and by the end of the week he really hustled. he really didn't get better, but he was trying and it reminded me i was out there to encourage the kids so i made it a point that everytime he got a rebound or did anything good i would yell and cheer for him.

so in the mornings we would do the drills and such, then we would break for lunch. at 2 everyone was supposed to be back at their courts. then we would play games. we lost our first and won our second on a buzzer beater the first day. yeah, argeni made a lay up with one second left to go up by one. that was exciting, he ran to the side line and i hugged him and spun around. it was great. the next day we went one and one again, but i could just feel that we were getting better. i can't remember how we finished with our record that last day but it was set up tournament style and we won the right one and were going to play in the championship in the afternoon.

the little man championship was the first game at the main court in the afternoon. we were tied at 24 with 30 seconds left and my team had the ball. they were passing the ball around and it finally got to jose, the guy who could be like sand paper at times. everyone on the team yelled for him not to shoot, not only was he not one of the best players but he was outside the 3-point line. he had a moment of deffness and shot the ball anyway it hit the rim and bounced in the air. it bounced on the rim two more times and went in. so with 10 seconds left the other team dribbled the ball down and missed a shot and my team won the championship also. it was so wild. i had such a great time and mostly because my kids were so incredible. richard the haitian hardly ever showed emotion so i made it a point to hug him and shake him just so he would smile. oh another thing my group won was a screaming contest. the leader of the week, chris renner has a thing where he yells "CHECK YOUR ATTITUDE" and the kids yell back "GLORIA A DIOS." the divisions had a competition one morning before worship and the loudest in each division got money to buy a soda pop. i really played it up and acted like i was going to jump out of my skin and i screamed as loud as i could, my guys responded like wise and we won. so after one day i took them to a colmado and we had pops together. that was amazing too.

so i had a great week with my team. and that was basketball in the morning and basketball in the afternoon. now, for basketball at night. the group of americans that came down here are all mostly or have been in their past jocks. at least two of them had been on Will's high school basketball team that won the state championship in kentucky a few years ago. one guy had played on wake forrest. he was 6'8". and at nights they were part of a 4 team tournament with 3 dominican teams. one team was coached by pedro. that's the dominican who is in charge of basketball for the ministry with Will. there was a select team from santiago, that's the city we're in. and another team from pueblo nuevo. which i think is a part of santiago. our first night was against pueblo nuevo. the guys had flown down the night before, they were playing on the outdoor court there at club benito juarez and they had never played together as a whole before. and also i think that they didn't play Will enough that first night. he's really good at basketball and he's a really smart point guard. well needless to say, they got beat pretty badly that first night. they couldn't score and didn't look very good.

the other nights were a different story. they just played so much better and didn't lose another game. they beat the other two teams and played in the championship against pueblo nuevo again and beat them by like 20. good, way to go guys. that last night they actually played in an indoor arena because it had rained that afternoon, a lot. the indoor arena was pueblo neuvo's home court. and the girls that had come down, two were going to be sophomores at division 1 colleges in the states and they both played basketball for the teams, played a game too. we played against a team that wasn't too good. and i coached them. we beat them pretty good. the two girls, mallory from murray state and meredith from vanderbilt, were amazing. it was a lot of fun. i really didn't have to do a lot. audrey played with them, Will's wife, and she's pretty good too. she plays great defense and had a lot of steals. she also made some outside shots. Will told me afterward that when he looked down and saw me coaching the team that he thought it was going to be weird but that i looked like i belonged down there. it was so much fun for me.

it was a good end to the week. and today we went to church at edward's church. he's the oldest son of gabriel, the co-president of G.O. ministries. the drummer there had played with us at gabriel's church and he remembered that i played guitar and so he hooked up a bass guitar and told me to come up and play with him and a guy on the keyboard and another guy on a guitar. i had no idea who they were or what they were playing, and oh yeah! i don't play bass guitar. but everyone told me to go up, so i went up and it was fun. i ended up just watching what the guitar player was playing and trying to play the notes on the bass guitar. it was crazy and the music was so loud. it was good.

then we came back after a crazy message from a dominican named socrates i guess. i didn't really understand it but he was all over and had so much energy. we had lunch and the team left for the beach with Will and Audrey. i was going to wash clothes today, which i need to do, but i think something is wrong with the water pump, so i'm going to have it looked at. i'll have to explain the clothes washing process sometime. and then i guess i was exhausted because i fell asleep for 3 hours. and now i'm up and have some time to write. but soon i'm going to go have dinner with the girls.

thank you everyone for praying for me. and thank you so much for everyone who has supported me in anyway. this week especially i feel like i have been able to be used by God. i made such a great connection with those kids. so keep praying and i'll keep writing and God will keep using me. :) i love you all.