Close your eyes and see what we see. A cement court; cracked, uneven, unpainted and also unforgiving for those defenders that choose to sacrifice the skin of their knees, elbows and hips upon it to save a point.
A sweltering 95 degree day with humidity to match. T shirts soaked after just a few minutes, sweat the common currency of the moment. Mercifully, a corrugated tin roof sits atop the court allowing some relief during practices through the pressing heat or the sudden thunderstorms that are commonplace on the island.
Young men, loud and aggressive, playing a game that has captured them. And two young women, just wanting to play, competing, sweating, siding up with the fellas to show what they have in a sport that separates boys and girls too often like eggs in a cake recipe.
And it is on. Some skill work, some attacking lines, some 6 on 6 game play. A visiting coach giving the boy's team some ideas on new games, scoring, drills, etc. They are grateful for the time on court, for the chance to get better and compete, no matter the outside conditions. They want to play.
At Don Jose National High School in Santa Rosa City in the Laguna province of Manila in the Philippine Islands, these exceptional young men and women aren't concerned about something that weighs heavily in our country these days: what they don't have.
A coach.
The school cannot afford a coach. For the women's team either. School budgets are a yearly 'Jenga' game of putting funds where it will affect the most children. At the moment, volleyball is not one of those areas.
So the Don Jose High School boys and girls teams schedule practices around the times the school isn't using the 'court' for other sports, dances, entertainment and classwork. They figure out transportation to their games and with the help of a math teacher who is not a coach and they progress through a season.
For some of us, this might seem too hard. Too much effort, too much extra work just to play the game of volleyball. But for kids in poor areas of third world countries, with no idea oftentimes if they'll have something to eat later on in the day, this IS something that propels them.
The game.
This is a short entry because there is not much else to say when you see a group of young people so taken with our game that they figure out how to make a season work with all odds and circumstances against them. They do it for a school that can't reciprocate. They do it for each other.
They do it because it's the game. Their game. Our game.
Look at this link to see the Don Jose National High School boys (and a couple girls) team practice.
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