Pete Strobl's Blog
Pete Strobl grew up in Los Angeles, California and went on to play college basketball at D1 Niagara University, New York. After graduating with his Master's Pete began playing professional basketball in Europe and has played in France, Austria, and Germany. This season Pete is Player/Assistant Coach for Merry Monk Ballina. He writes a weekly blog for Streetballireland.com on basketball, life and his experience in Ireland.
Blog #5 - Diversity
I grew up in a pretty diverse area and went to a high school with a wide mix of ethnic backgrounds. During my time there we had an enrollment of around 2000 students composed of roughly 30% "White", 30% "Black", 30% "Latino" (Mexican), and 10% "Asian". I had friends from every walk of life and learned a great deal about a lot of different cultures. My friends had names like Kunte, Didi, Jose, Phemica, Hui, Taryn, Jud, Sadie, Hector, Chad, and Nadina. These all seemed like normal names to me until I began my basketball adventures and started exploring the world. I thought I had been exposed to just about everything over the years playing with teammates from Austria, Lithuania, Greece, Senegal, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Russia, Germany, Serbia, France, and every other place I'm forgetting. I thought I had just about seen and heard it all. I was wrong!
A good portion of my day is spent preparing myself for Saturday. That's generally "Game-Day" here in Ireland so that's what we're all looking forward to throughout the week. All the weightlifting, shooting, agility drills, training sessions, and everything else we do is aimed at getting us ready for the weekend's big game. However, I also do a good deal of coaching in some of the schools in and around Ballina. During these coaching sessions I've noticed a few different things about Irish kids: 1) They're tough, and 2) I can't pronounce some of their names! I do my best, honestly I do. It's just that I've never met a "Finbar" before (that's one of the easier names that comes to mind).
Today I was attempting to teach them how to jump off of their left foot for a lay-up and I wanted 2 lines. Most of the time when I say to form a line, a fist-fight breaks out between them trying to be the first in line. To avoid this, I've learned to pick a kid and tell the rest to stand behind him. Fortunately there's always a Conor, Liam, or Padraig in every group and on most days I've been lucky enough to pick one of them to be my leader. Every once in a while the cards don't fall my way however and I am faced with the challenge of learning a new name. Today I picked a kid in order to instruct the rest of the group to stand behind him and had no idea what he said when I asked for his name. He had to repeat his name at least 5 times before I even had an inkling of what he said. I felt bad, but I simply couldn't understand his Irish accent. By this time the rest of the class was starting to laugh. I was tempted to ask if there was a "Conor" in the house, but I did the right thing and told the kids to stand behind "him".
After the session I politely asked the teacher how she chose to address "him". I was honestly hoping she would simply shrug and say "I have no idea". Turns out that the kid is actually from Poland and barely speaks English, thus the laughter. For all of you that are sitting there wondering what his name was, it's "Gleb".
Pete Strobl
petestrobl@gmail.com