the mighty snowflakes

since october i have been coaching a club basketball team here in bishkek. the team is made up of athletes (in a rough interpretation of the word) from hope academy, a local christian school. most of my kids from bishkek international school are on another club team that they have played with for a couple of years.

it's been a good time and i have really enjoyed it. in the past the kids from hope and bis have only played in a couple of local tournaments and that was it. i worked with a local russian coach to form a league with four schools from bishkek. the six teams (my team, another club team, and the four schools) have been playing games once a week since november.

my team (which is officially called the bishkek spartans but i like "snowflakes" better) finished the first part of the season 2-3. we took a break for the holidays and are now back at it for the second half of the season. we lost our first game by 40 points (it wasn't really even that close) but have rebounded since them to roll off 3 wins in a row including a dramatic come from behind victory last week to bring our record to 5-4. respectable but not great. none of the kids on my team have ever really played organized basketball before and they haven't received any "real" coaching before this year. so it has been exciting seeing them learn and grow. we have one more game next week before the playoffs start. go snowflakes!

after tonight's game... the players gave me a team sweatshirt and a really nice "thank you" card. not sure i would have gotten it had we lost... but thankfully we won tonight!