pallacanestro, baloncesto,篮球, บาสเก็ต... Basketball!

It has been a fun and interesting two weeks at Kirby school by all accounts!

Lais, (my awesome exchange student from Brazil,) just told me... the first week, she didn't want to go to school at all. The language barrier and everything... EVERYTHING, in English, was a challenge at first. And still is, truly. But, she finished the thought by saying, now she wants to go to school!! So the terrifying culture shock and newness is beginning to adjust for her, and hopefully all of our exchange students!  

Last night, I read a post on Facebook written by Alex, the student living with the Foshee family. Of course, Google translate is really awful, according to Ale and Nubia, but I still enjoy reading our exchange students posts, choppy translator English or not! 

Alex wrote about his first week, the classes he was taking and so forth. And then this, about basketball. (keep in mind Google translate is not very good!)

 "Roh my God basketball! The level is monstrously high! Purer, everyone knows how to play basketball, girls as well as boys! And they are machines! Really I feel so little... and I will upgrade!"

You get the idea. :-) (I hope I don't embarrass him buy sharing his post. I love it!) 

Each day, I pick up my daughter from her classroom and then drive over to the gym to pick up Lais. Usually we sit down and watch practice for about fifteen minutes before we head home. 

It has been SO MUCH FUN to watch!! 

It is no secret that I love to watch basketball. Especially our Trojans! This year, the bar is high, just as we hope it is every year, but it's also full of newness and camaraderie as our seasoned Trojans help our exchange students learn the ropes. They laugh and kid, they try to explain different drills to the new kids, etc., they run from one end to the other doing all the things that we all did at their age.... And this year, playing ball in our gym every day, are kids from six countries!! And that's just the boys team! (Girls team update later!) We have Alex from Belgium, Julian from Italy, Cale from China, Bill from Thailand, Marco from Spain, and our boys from Kirby, Arkansas, USA! 

I've only been in the gym a few days a week for about fifteen minutes usually. But from last week til now, our exchange students have improved quickly!! 

I love seeing the friendships and trust forming between these guys who have never known one another, and are from such different worlds, as they help each other while overcoming not one- not two- not three- not four- not five, BUT SIX(!) language barriers, and work every day to improve!! And while I'm sure it's been quite a distraction getting everyone acclimated to Kirby basketball in the first week, Marty sure smiles big when he talks about his new team members! 

Well, you can't help but smile! 

It's about more than a game that we admittedly, all love. It's about seeing friendships born on a basketball court and flourish through the joy and misery that is practicing basketball in 98 degree heat every afternoon! It's about hearing your local boys cheer on and encourage guys they've only known a couple weeks who can barely understand them! It's about the click, that happens when you *finally* know which direction you are supposed to be running at which time, or when that layup finally falls through the net.

This summer and this school year has brought with it, many challenges. Kirby families are hosting 16 exchange students and I feel confident in speaking for all when I say... we are all already attached!!   

This year is something different at Kirby School.

Something awesome! 

GO TROJANS!!!      

Alex

Bill

Cale 

Marco

Julian

Dawson

Clay

Joe 

Bo

Trevor

Lee

Spencer

Lane

Carson

Brady

Shawn 

Layton

Sam

Joseph

Logan

A little encouragement!

A little encouragement from nature! 

A little encouragement from a former student! 

A little encouragement from a new student parent! 

This is still Kirby

This is still Kirby...

We've never been the biggest school around.

We have never had the nicest, most state-of-the-art gym.

We have never had football.

We don't a huge population to pull from and the greatest part of us are in the lower side of the income bracket.

We don't win every single game every single year.

We are not usually big enough to drown a wet rat.

But here's what we do have.

We have heart.

We have tradition.

We have the love of a game that we all grew up playing, many of us from before we could walk. Same with our parents and grandparents before.

We have basketball goals in our yards that cost nothing to use.

We have access to our gym, and kids practicing there pretty much any and every night.

We have an expectation of 100% balls-to-the-wall effort.

I was curious where that phrase came from, especially since it's sounds so, ummm, colorful, so I looked it up.

It came from the Vietnam War, said during an air-raid. The throttle in the airplanes had a ballgrip and when you push the ball forward, close to the front wall of the cockpit, the fuel increases resulting in the highest possible speed. It was said, "You're in good hands... as long as you go in on those targets balls to the wall."

That sounds like us, right?!

We are also not all blessed with the same level of talent, but we are taught from the start, that effort matches talent ANY DAY.

Stephen King said, "Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work."

So how does a little old school, out in the sticks, continuously excel each and every year? What are we cooking up here?!

When I was in college, a friend and I were looking at my old basketball clippings from the state paper after we learned we graduated the same year. We looked at those little one or two sentence write-ups, most of which I still have. I showed him mine and we flipped over the papers and found several he was in. (He played ball at ASU on scholarship.) He said he remembered playing Kirby and that it was always a job. He said Kirby was always a bunch of small, corn fed country boys who would run you to death for 32 minutes. He said he remembered we never had much size, but that we were scrappy and you had a job ahead of you when you went there. And yes, if memory serves me, we DID beat them (Fouke) back in the mid-90s.

This year I was standing outside at halftime visiting with some folks from another school. They commented that our senior girls team didn't know they were little.

No, they don't! Because small in stature doesn't equal small in performance!

Now back up and look at our school with a wide angle lens.

This is still Kirby.

We may not be the biggest.

We may not have the newest, nicest facilities.

We may not have what a lot of others do....

but what we do have, is BIG.

HEART, TRY, TRADITION, and as it was pointed out to me the other night by my good friend, Lisa Wright, we have an old gym with years of heart, determination and intimidation and grit ingrained into that old wood floor, that's seen a lot of generations of basketball that didn't know the meaning of quit!!

We are small. And we are fierce!

This is still Kirby.