Don't Win, Don't Talk

At East Aurora High School, the boys’ basketball team coaches have a rule: after a loss, no talking is permitted on the bus ride home from the game. 

However, on the ride home from a hard-fought loss, some of the boys from the sophomore team were talking. This infuriated assistant coach Arnie Hubbard so much that he put a 16-year old player into a choke hold to the point where he couldn’t breathe.

Luckily, Head Coach A.J. Harris saw what was occurring and was able to stop the violence before it got too out of hand. Coach Hubbard no longer is working at East Aurora High School.

Eric Zorn, a blogger for the Chicago Tribune, wrote a short post on this topic. He focused less on the insane act of a coach choking a player, but more on the enforcement of an “idiotic rule” like players not being able to speak after a loss.

What I found especially interesting about this was not the post itself, but the comments. While I agree with Zorn’s view on this team rule, I was shocked by the number of commenters who strongly disagreed.

Some commenters just ripped Zorn apart. One woman said that Zorn didn’t understand the importance of winning in high school sports today. She writes, “Coaches get fired if they don’t win. Zorn is out of touch on this issue.”

Another man expressed the same sentiment, adding: “[It is a] good rule… it teaches discipline and respect, which is actually more important than the fundamentals of basketball.”

A third person felt the same way. “If you lose, you don’t chatter like a bunch of idiots on the ride back, you think about why you lost.”

As a high school athlete, I understand the level of commitment and seriousness a high school sport entails. New Trier focuses a huge amount of attention on athletics, and winning is undoubtedly an important aspect of New Trier sports. However, I have never heard of rule this outrageous and demeaning. This rule focuses too much on the outcome – winning or losing - and undermines what I personally think are the more important values: hard work, good sportsmanship and learning from your mistakes.

I agree 100% with what Zorn has to say. “It’s a stupid rule to treat every loss as though it’s some occasion for reproachful introspection and gloomy silence. It’s a game.”

What do you think?

The full story can be found here.

"Lin-sanity"

In the past 14 days, Asian-American Jeremy Lin has gone from benchwarmer to global basketball star. Starting his career in the NBA only 2 weeks ago, Jeremy has led the New York Knicks to 7 consecutive wins. Lin, an Economics major at Harvard, has been seemingly overlooked as a basketball player since high school. Now, he is the very first American-born player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent in the NBA, and he is finally receiving his long-deserved chance.

The question that so many College and NBA coaches are asking themselves right now is, “How could I have missed such a talented and gifted player?” Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education and former Harvard basketball player, believes he knows why Lin’s extraordinary talent flew under the radar for so long:

"This is classic low expectations, and frankly stereotyping," Duncan said. "He was underappreciated and under-recognized. The fact that he's Asian-American, those two things are absolutely linked."

Lin agrees, saying that race has always played a factor in his basketball career. Asians in America tend to be stereotyped with over-achievement in education-oriented pursuits, not athletic ones. This may have contributed to the reasons why Lin had been so overlooked through his years playing basketball. In high school, Lin had excelled in his studies, as well as on the court. However, given the lack of Chinese or Taiwanese players that played college basketball and ultimately made it to the NBA, Lin was rarely considered as athletic scholarship “material.”

Things have seemed to shift in Lin’s favor starting when Knicks’ Coach Mike D'Antoni desperately expressed a need for a new point guard because his were all injured. Lin, still undrafted, was invited to try out for a spot. Since then, Lin has continued to succeed and thrive in his new role as an NBA star.

Lin’s unexpected success has not only had an impact on the Knicks’ record, but also on Asian-Americans, and other minority groups for that matter. Lin is proof that you don’t need to fit a stereotypical checklist, other than ability and willingness to work hard, in order to make it in the NBA. Lin hopes that his recent basketball achievements will open the doors for other young, basketball-aspiring Asian-Americans, comparing it to how Tiger Woods introduced watching and playing golf to new demographics.

With such a sudden burst of popularity, it would be easy for a new player like Lin to come off as cocky and arrogant. However, Lin remains humble and modest; he is incredibly grateful for such a wonderful opportunity.

In this video, Lin describes this entire experience as a “blessing,” and his appreciation and love for the game is evident: