Deschiderea sezonului sportiv

Even though the 250 lb man who had finished his fourth and final wrestling match was more tired than I, I was dead tired after just watching a day full of soccer, cycling, wrestling and, thanks to me, some frisbee on the side.

Sunday was the opening of the sports season in Mereseni, a day full of different competitions on the village's soccer field. I couldn't go last year, but this year I came with two Canadian tourists, Ziggy and John, and my frisbee.

Ziggy, John and I came from Chisinau in the morning, and I gave them a short walking tour of the village. Ziggy had been to many villages in east Asia, and John was born and raised in a small town in Newfoundland, but this was their first experience in an Eastern European village. They got a good sample right away, as an old lady and her middle-aged daughter called us across the road to serve us wine and candy. It is a Moldovan tradition for a family to mourn the anniversary of a loved one's death by serving wine to anyone they see in the village. I understood the situation and began a conversation with the women and a man who later joined us. My visitors had no idea what was going on, and after seeing me drink my glass of wine in one gulp, assumed that they were about to drink grape juice; needless to say, they were surprised when they tasted something stronger.

After quick stops at the cemetery, culture house, pasture, my house and the school, the three of us went to the field with my frisbee in hand. We were there early for the festivities, but there were a couple dozen kids hanging around the field, so we started a game of ultimate frisbee. I had taught my English students how to play the week earlier, so they knew not only how to play, but also how to say, "Here!" "Nice defense!" and "The score is 3-1," in English, among other phrases. Knowing that the soccer game wasn't scheduled to start until 2 p.m. and that that meant it wouldn't actually start until 2:45, the three of us left the frisbee with my students and went back to the house to have some lunch.

After lunch, we returned to the field to watch the soccer game, which had just started. There was a lightly contested match between Mereseni and Sarata Mereseni, the small Russian and Ukrainian village that shares a mayor with Mereseni. But the real match was between the adults in the village and the boys in the village under 18 years old. It was well played, and I'm not sure what the final score was because we were drawn away multiple times to throw the frisbee in a circle of kids.

The 90-degree weather had us constantly going to the nearby store to purchase, at various times, water, lime soda, ice cream and beer. With the heat not showing any sign of stopping, the soccer game ended, and there was a brief cycling race among the kids. Then the crowd of hundreds gathered around some gymnastics mats that had been laid together on the grass. It was time for wrestling.

Moldovan wrestling, "trinta," is a simple form of wrestling based solely on takedowns. The purpose is to put your opponent on his back as a direct result of the takedown; if he lands on his stomach, the ref blows his whistle and both wrestlers return to standing positions without any points being awarded. The two most common ways to achieve this are with a fancy but easy to escape head-and-arm throw or by gaining position on your opponent's side and sweeping his leg. Throws are made easier because both competitors wear a belt. In my opinion, it's a lesser form of wrestling than the folk-style and freestyle wrestling that is prevalent in U.S. high schools and colleges because there are so few possible successful moves, but nevertheless it's exciting.

The competition was divided into three age divisions, the first of which featured boys up to 14 years old fighting to win a rooster. At this age level, the wrestling was simplistic and focused mostly on head-and-arms. The winner, Mihai Brinzeanu, was clearly more experienced and used a larger variety of moves to take down his opponents.

The second division was for boys up to 18 years old, who wrestled for a lamb. There were more close matches, and many of the boys were using strategies they had adapted from the judo training that they receive in Hincesti. Denis Mititelu, a tall, slender and muscular kid, used excellent positioning and fast hands to win, and he put the sheep on his shoulders and paraded it around the mats.

Then it was time for the adults, who wrestled for a ram. I had thought of entering in the competition, but was happy that none of my students had mentioned it to me. Then, as men were signing up the competition, some acquaintances of mine in their 20s asked me if I was going to wrestle. I demurred a couple times, but then said, "Okay, I'll try." I told the mayor to sign me up, but he refused to put me on the list. Then I told him to sign up Bill Clinton. He still refused. I'm not sure what his reasons were, but I'm sure he wasn't afraid of me winning it all. After five minutes, the other men and I stopped asking him.

All in all, 26 men from the village entered the tournament. Most of the matches were pretty good, with much better defense than the boys' matches. Several pairs of shorts were ripped during fights, which added a lot of amusement for the crowd and a little bit of skin for the girls. In the end, a boy remained to fight a man: Denis Mititelu, the boy who had won the lamb, was matched against Victor Cucereanu, a 250 lb man in his mid-30s who, although shorter and with blond hair, had a similar muscular build to Zangief from Street Fighter II.

For the first few minutes, neither fighter had a clear advantage. The boy was more active and aggressive, but the man was immovable and was directing movement around the mat with his hand on the back of the boy's neck. Middle-aged men exclaimed to their friends, "Uite la patanul acela." "Look at that kid." After five minutes, the timekeeper yelled, "Time!" but instead of going to a contrived overtime, several men in the crowd said, "Let them wrestle." The match continued.

Minutes passed. Denis continued his assault, sometimes getting a leg and knocking his opponent over, but Victor always able to recover to his belly. Victor, although flagging from the heat and a lack of conditioning, continued to show flashes of power, reminding the crowd and his opponent that he was twice as old and nearly twice as large as the juvenile challenger. Whereas Denis rarely came close to putting Victor on his back with his takedowns, Victor used his weight and power to his advantage, and Denis barely escaped several times by bellying out.

As the sun beat down and hundreds of villagers looked on, the man and the boy continued their battle. After one burst of activity, Victor grabbed a water bottle out of the crowd and doused his face. After another, Denis sprung up from the mat and stood ready to fight. Victor stumbled up and smiled at him in disbelief. The crowd laughed; momentum was on the boy's side.

A minute later, Denis took Victor down to his stomach again. Denis stood up quickly. Victor rose up wearily, looked at the referee and waved his hands in front of him; no more.

The crowd erupted. The boy jumped up and down, pumping his fist in the air before collapsing in the center of the mat. His friend came to give him a high five and a bottle of water. After 30 seconds, Denis stood up, grabbed the rope that was wrapped around his new ram's horns, and led it on a short trip around the mat before passing it to his father. Later, as according to tradition, he would butcher the ram and hold a feast for the winning soccer team.

After the final match, the crowd lingered around the field. The evening air had cooled slightly, and everyone continued to socialize and revel in the uncharacteristically summer-like day. The day's events, especially the final, had electrified us all, and no one was eager to go home.

Ajutor!

We still need thousands of dollars to help fund the Moldovan Village Basketball league.

You can help here.

Fotbal american

As a native Chicagoan and life-long Bears fan, I'm very excited about the Super Bowl this sunday, where my Bears will take on the Indianapolis Colts. It's not the first time the Bears have been in the Super Bowl in my lifetime, but I was only two years old when they won in 1986, so my memory is a little foggy. I'll be in Chisinau watching the game in a secret location, although there are only so many secret locations in Chisinau that receive the Armed Forces Network, so you can probably figure out where I'll be.

Friday, I wore my Bears sweater to school and wrote "Go Bears!" on the chalkboards in both my English and informatica classrooms. I told each class about the game, and offered them one extra credit point if they came to school Tuesday and could tell me the score of the game. Why extra credit in informatica? Because the only way for them to know the score is to do a Google search of the team names, and that shows some technical savvy.

Also, before I let each class use the computers, I made the kids yell, "Go Bears!" with me several times. Some of the students looked at me like I was an idiot, but others really got into it. During passing periods throughout the day, boys would come up to me, and say, "Mr. Peter!" When I turned to face them, they would put both their fists in the air and say, "Go Bears!"

Judoisti la scoala

For more than a year, a handful of my students had been telling me that they practiced judo in nearby Hincesti. I didn't know until today that two of them are some of the best judoists in Eastern Europe.

At an assembly today, Eugen Vreme, and 8th grader, and Mihail Brinzeanu, a 7th grader, received the well-earned praise from their fellow students because they brought home first and seventh place, respectively, in an international judo competition in Kyiv, Ukraine.

The competition, the Olympic Hopes Tournament, featured boys and girls from 14 countries, mostly in Eastern Europe but also including Israel, Greece and Great Britain. In Eugen and Mihail's under-46 kg weight class, there were 34 boys. Our boys not only made our village proud, but they should make the entire country proud; Eugen was the only Moldovan in the entire tournament to win gold.

How do two village kids from the poorest country in Europe end up representing their country so well? Well, it helps that Mihai and Ilie Buiuc are their trainers. The Buiuc brothers were students of Vasile Colta, and became some of the USSR's best judoists in the 1970s. They took over Colta's studio later, and now train boys and girls from all over Hincesti county.

Eugen received the boatload of the praise today at the assembly, from teachers, the director and students who make appreciated "ooohs" and "aaahs" when they saw his trophy and medals. Eugen, who is normally incredibly talkative in my class, for better or worse, was taciturn in the face of praise; he answered questions that his teacher and a student interviewer asked him about judo, but never expounded on anything. Judo has certainly taught him humility.

The school director closed by making an excellent point; she had looked at both boys' grades from last semester and was happy to report that both boys had excellent grades. Judo hasn't affected their success at school. If anything, it has probably made them even more disciplined and focused.

I already thought highly of these two boys, but now I respect them even more. Especially because they can probably beat me up.

Antrenement

Although I am the co-organizer of the Peace Corps national basketball league this year, I had ruled out coaching a team for the 2007 season. Last year, I hadn't felt necessary in "practice," which was really just a scrimmage every night. I enjoyed hanging around with the kids, but in the end, I felt that they didn't care about playing in the league and that the whole experience wasn't fulfilling to me. As I approached my second school year, in which my schedule seems more packed (maybe it's teaching 50 percent more hours and also trying to learn Russian), I had given up basketball for this year.

That was before three girls from the neighboring village of Sarata Galbena showed up outside my classroom one afternoon and offered a challenge on behalf of themselves and the boys' team. Sarata Galbena had a volunteer last year, and Casey and I organized exhibition games in each village and Peace Corps league matches in Hincesti. I told Silvia, the English-speaking team manager, that I would talk to students and see if they were interested.

When I asked the ninth and 11th graders Wednesday, they responded enthusiastically and agreed to start practicing at the gym on Thursday night (when the 11th graders already had extra sports training).

I wasn't sure how to approach this new year of basketball. I didn't want it to be laid-back like last year, but I didn't want to make it too strict. Other than sports class at English camp this summer, I had never run a sports practice, especially one in my non-native language or at such an instructional level (a ninth-grade Moldovan villager is far less skilled at basketball than an average seventh-grade American). I planned it out in my head and walked to the school gym.

At 6 p.m., I lined up the 15 boys and eight girls who had come and gave a short introduction speech. I told them that the boys who played last year and graduated had played well, but not as well as they could have. They didn't play as well as they could have, I said, because they didn't want to involve other classes in the team and because instead of learning something in practice, they just scrimmaged. At one point, at a loss for words, I said in English, "They didn't do ****. They just ****ed around." Considering that the only English words a lot of these kids understand are the curse words and my best English students are girls, this may not have been the smartest or classiest choice of words, but what's done is done. The physical education teacher also took offense quickly at my description of last years' practices, saying that I was criticizing her. Granted, I chose my words poorly, but that exact moment was not when I wanted to discuss the situation.

I started the kids with a short warm-up run around the gym. The students at my school have been trained from an early age to run in straight lines, with the tallest student leading the pack and everyone following him in order of height. I yelled to my kids, "Don't wait for Iura if he's slow. If you're faster, pass him!" A few of the boys got the message and ran at their own pace.

Then I circled the kids for stretches. You'd think it was the first time they had ever stretched in their lives. Don't they see soccer players doing it on TV and wonder what the deal is? By far the best "cultural difference" moment was when I sat on the floor of the gym to lead the butterfly stretch and told the kids to sit down. Moldovans are very superstitious about sitting on the ground or the floor; according to them, it will cool your reproductive organs and make you sterile. The boys sat down rather quickly and got into the stretching position, after I told them that their balls wouldn't freeze. The girls remained standing, and the gym teacher told them they didn't have to "sit on the cold floor." Eventually, all the girls sat on the ground, but I think they remained worried.

I ran the kids through some simple dribbling skills, and they weren't bad. No one was approaching the level of an American high school basketball player, but they were better than I expected them to be.

Then I ran them through some passing drills, working only with chest passes. As I expected, they quickly reverted to the "Overhead Chuck-and-Pray" pass that populates so much of Moldovan village basketball. Something to work on.

At this point, the first boy misbehaved. He was shooting the ball and not listening while I was talking about something to the group. I told him to do five push-ups. He looked at me incredulously, but then did then. Over the course of the first hour, I handed out a good 60 push-ups to a handful of boys and one girl. One ninth-grade boy was doing lazy push-ups that made it look like he was humping the floor. I told him I didn't want to see what he did on Saturday nights at the disco; I wanted to see a good push-up.

I then demonstrated a lay-up and formed a line at each end of the court to practice shooting lay-ups. Most of the boys seemed to get it with the need of some minor adjustments. Most of the girls, however, kept stopping right under the basket, getting set, and then shooting with both hands. Once again, something to work on.

Lastly, I showed the correct form for shooting and we practiced it. The kids reverted again to the Moldovan Overhead Chuck-and-Pray. The crazy thing is that some of these kids can consistently sink shots with the Overhead Chuck-and-Pray. Nevertheless, it's a third thing to work on.

We scrimmaged for the second hour, with four four-person groups of boys and two four-person groups of girls. My basketball standards have lowered quite a bit since I was last in America, but nevertheless I was impressed by the effort, tenaciousness and sometimes even the skill that these kids showed. They seem to really enjoy the game, and that should help motivate them to learn it better. After about 40 minutes of scrimmage, the gym teacher said that the floor was too moist and slippery for the girls to play. The boys could keep playing, but it was time for the girls to go home. I asked two of the girls who were sitting on the bench next to me why the boys could play but they couldn't. They said that boys are more careful and tougher, so they were less likely to fall and wouldn't cry if they did. I told one of them, Nadia, that I had cried when I broke my knee playing sports, and then I asked her if she had cried every time she had fallen in her life, to which she responded no.

"So saying that girls can't play now but boys can is just talk, not fact," I said. The statement amused her, perhaps doubly so because she had been to English camp and had seen me treat girls no differently from boys during sports classes.

I'm going to train these kids for a December match against Sarata Galbena, and we'll see what happens after that. Maybe they'll want to join the Peace Corps league this year, maybe not. Either way, I'm thankful that the time that I spend with them is a chance for me to know and appreciate my older students in a way that I can't during school hours. Boys who don't seem to enjoy my English or computer classes are more comfortable talking to me during basketball practice, and that comfort translates to the classroom as well. I know for a fact, however, that with my two hours of computer class, one optional English class and four hours of basketball a week with the 11th grade, I will have a much closer and meaningful relationship with them than I did with last year's 11th grade. At the very least, I already know all of their names.