Back to the basketball. Every now and then we had a teachers vs students game. This was designed for the teachers to win, at all costs. Our coach ensured that all of the PE staff played, and there was never any danger of them losing. There was a lot of pre-game goading, mainly from the coach who wanted to wind us up as much as possible. Intimidation tactics were deployed relentlessly during practice and Economics lessons. Losing to the students was not an option for them. That would be a serious breach of teacher pride.
Those matches gave us some kind of insight in to what a competitive game with another school would be like. Sure enough, once our coach was satisfied that we had some level of ability and game play to not get completely humiliated, he set up a match with Walton school. This was another level for us entirely, and our coach decided it was about time he gave us some pointers on the rules so that we weren’t all sent off in the first ten minutes. Picking up fouls was pretty natural for us, but they had never really been enforced during our practice sessions. Most of the fouls that we had experienced until then were to do with infringements in the D (the shooting zone). These resulted in free shots to the attacking player who had been foulled, where they could have two attempts to score a basket from the free throw line. Other fouls had not really been part of our games so it came as a bit of a surprise to find out that there were multiple occasions when these could be picked up. Such as contact, double dribbling, travelling etc. If a player picked up five fouls, they were out of the game. This didn’t bode well.
For the match we were presented with our school basketball kit. It was hideous. I don’t know where our coach got them from, but they were dark green with black stripes. This bore no resemblance to the school colours of red and black, so I can only assume he cobbled them together from some local club. Looking like a bunch of badly assorted garden vegetables we took to the court and were given our pre-match motivational speech from the coach. This basically involved a fair few swear words, some comment about tactics but basically the gist was to try and be in their faces as much as possible.
We were 15-0 down within about 3 minutes. It was a shambles. None of us knew how to cope with a team that had clearly been playing together for years, and had skills at a much higher level than us. When we finally managed to score a couple of points, we jumped up and down in delight. To which our coach came running over, sneering at us that we ‘were a bunch of squealing girls’. It may have not been the most motivational comment but it made us all start concentrating on what we could do to actually give the other team some kind of match. I’m not sure what the final score was but it was a hammering, probably something like 70-22 but at least we started putting up a fight once we’d started to get used to the match environment.
We only played one other match against another school, which this time was played away. I was made captain for that one, which I was very proud of. I scored 21 points this time, and as a team we pushed them much closer this time around. We still lost but it was a much better effort. I ended up getting got fouled off, having picked up five offences. I was pretty unhappy about that, but the coach was delighted. We were never going to be anything spectacular, but he was more interested in our passion and fight so he left happy.
I’ve probably made our coach out to be a hard character, but I liked him a lot. We got on very well, and I enjoyed his ruthless competitiveness. It didn’t bother me that this sometimes manifested itself aggressively, that was just his personality and at the end of the day he just wanted everyone to do as well as they could. He loved his sport and always wanted to be the quickest runner or most talented player on the court. I can completely associate with that, and I know if I had been a teacher (heaven forbid) I would have been exactly the same. I went along to his local basketball club a few times and even bought myself some ridiculously large basketball trainers. Honestly, they looked like clown shoes. They had a little pump to inflate them and were designed more like boots to protect your ankles, but they were ridiculous. My mate Jonny took one look at them and wet himself. Quite right too, they were beyond daft. However, I enjoyed playing throughout school and if nothing else, the sport was fantastic for getting fit.
After school I played sporadically at University for fun, but nothing like before. Clearly basketball was not going to be a long term sport for me.