My nascent coaching career came to a quick conclusion this past weekend in the championship game of the first ever Toronto Arabic Sunday School tournament. It was also the only game of the Toronto Arabic Sunday School tournament.
We won silver.
It was an action packed game, final score 17-15. After scoring only 4 points and getting pummelled in the first half, our team roared back for 11 in the second half, led by this one kid whose name I keep forgetting, and who scored all of our points. Anyway, he was pretty good, although if he had hit all four of his free throws instead of just one, we would’ve won the game, so really, he sucked. Our best player was Danial, a 9-year-old, 3′11″ dynamo, who, after getting his jumper blocked twice by the big baddies on the other team, came up to his coach, tugged on his jeans, and said, “Uncle Coach, I’m not going to shoot any more, I promise. Just leave me on the floor to play defense.” I looked at my bench, noticed only two boys, one of whom was panting like a dog and the other of whom was waving to his camcorder-toting mom, and I shrugged my shoulders. Sure enough, Dany spent the rest of the game squirting between people’s legs, somehow stealing the ball from their hands, then passing it right away to that one good player we had whose name I still can’t remember. I think Danial’s final stat-line looked like this: 0 points, 0 rebounds, 0 blocks, 342 steals.
After the game, everyone was ticked off at the referee, who was also the coach of the opposing team. Also, they accused me of not being man enough to stand up to him and tell him to call some fouls on the other team. Dany in particular was quite jaded by the whole experience. He sat on the floor by the water fountain and steamed. When I asked him what was wrong, he simply stared into the distance and muttered, “we should’ve won, we should’ve won…”
