First off, I just want to say that the Sriptures are always correct such as when the proverbist writes in Proverbs ¨Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall¨ Proverbs 16:18
Well this was so true a little over a week ago for I was definitely feeling a little prideful.
You see, Rigoberto, Miguel and myself played in another tournament (18 teams) last week in a nearby city and we won the whole thing again (makes 3 championships in 3 tourneys). We ran our record to 17-0 in tournament games, so obviously we were feeling a little invinsible!!!!
But that didn´t last long!
The next day, I was in my house trying to recover a little from all those games we played in that one day tourney and Miguel came to my door (actually he just stood out in the street and whistled and called out my name until I came outside as is the custom here in Mexico). He was out of breath and he asked me if I wanted to play in another tournament in the gymnasium here in Teopisca (I love playing in the gym because I can actually shoot some three pointer...see when we play outside, the rims are really small and there is always a lot of wind up here in the mountains so it makes ¨tres puntas muy deficil.¨......not so in the gym!!!)
I thought that was strange because I knew that the tournament here in town that weekend was only for 4 ¨selection teams¨(meaning the best players the different cities).....Our city of Teopisca (city of maybe 20 thousand people), San Cristobal (85 thousand), Comitan (115 thousand) and Las Margaritas (65 thousand).
Miguel told me that Las Margaritas had not shown up for the last game against Comitan, which would decide 3rd and 4th place for the weekend. He asked me if I could be ready to play in 10 minutes. I said of course and Sarita and I headed for the gym. When I walked in I could not believe who we were about to play. I mean these guys were giants....at least compared to my team. Let´s put it this way-I am 5´7¨and I am the second tallest on our team with our tallest guy being an even 6´1¨. Their starting 5 were 6´5¨, 6´4¨, 6´2¨, 6´2¨, and 5´9¨. Like I said, these were the selection teams and Comitan does have 115,000 people to choose from. Another funny thing is that I played down low on the left block in our 2-1-2 zone.....me playing down low....are you kidding me....I truthfully only came up to one of the guy´s armpit....and truthfully again, I think I had 2 whole rebounds during the whole game on the defensive end.
Well, the gym was probably about half full, maybe 350 people watching, and I would say about 320 of them were for us. After all we were just a local team with a normal ¨non-selection¨ team
and we were definitley little david squaring off against goliath the giant.
We jumped out to a quick 10-2 lead in about the first 2 minutes as Comitan were all smiles and were just playing around as I stole the ball the first 2 times down the court and we hit some threes. But that ended quick as they got serious and ran off about 15 straight points.....all within about 8 foot of the basket. But we hung in there and tied it back up toward the end of the 1st quarter. We must have shot about 10 threes in the first quarter alone because we definitely couldn´t get near the basket. They made a run at the end of quarter 1 and led by about 4 at quarters end.
The second quarter was a different story. We couldn´t make a shot and they couldn´t miss and they led by 18 at halftime.
Third quarter again was different but in our favor. We came out of halftime running and gunning as we turned up the pressure a little. I stole the ball and hit a layup, sandwiched between two of my 6 threes for the game, and we cut the lead to 8. Man was the gym rockin!!!! But then they hit consecutive baskets and they led by 13 at quarters end.
Fourth quarter we would hit threes and cut the lead into single digits but then they would pound it inside and we kept fouling and they kept hitting free throws and in the end we lost by 12....74-62.
We had a great time and to be honest, I was not upset at all about losing seeing the situation I found myself in. And after all, it did take a ¨selection team¨to give us our first loss!!!
But as I said at the beginning of this email, I was a little prideful about our record and I believe that the Lord wanted to make sure that I didn´t get too big of a head walking around town here so He just had me to be humbled a little.
But, next week we get a chance to start that win streak again as we have another all day tourned in a nearby city up in the mountains.
Gotta run,
luv you all,
Lance (Nash to my boys at the gym)
These pics are of the tournament we won right before we lost that one game in town at the gym.
Me and the boys...we only have 6 players on the team.
I reffed my first game of my entire life during one of the games. They just ask one of the teams to supply a ref and no one wanted to do this late in the day so all of a sudden I heard on the their make shift loud speaker.....¨hey gringo can you please help us out and be the ref for this game¨.... everyone started laughing and of course I said I would. Only one ref so I had to ref from half court most of the time.
Coach said to move your feet on defense......this guy obviously has never been coached!!!!!
Just a few various pics
I wish Sarita hadn´t caught me looking as I made this pass cause I could have played it off as a ¨no look¨pass......
Just can´t jump as high as I used to....and this photo just reminds us what we already know....white men can´t jump!!!!!! I fouled him, he hit the layup and the foul shot.....ooooppppsssss.
that´s all folks!!!
