The Boys Who Played without Shoes

Last year, I think it was around November or December 2014, the boys from the village were in the district volleyball championship, up against the team from San Marcos.  To win would allow them the chance to play in the National Tournament, so nerves were high.  In the first game, the boys had taken the lead and were up 22-19 when these nerves began to affect their play.  They gave up six straight points and lost the game.  The same thing happened in the second game with the boys blowing another late lead.  Obviously, they were upset after losing district.  It had been right there for them to take, but they let it slide right through their fingers.  This loss, though, would turn out to be fuel for what would be a phenomenal 2015 season. 

Since volleyball is the first competition of the year that the students play in, as soon as school opens, the volleyball nets go up.  From the start of the year, we knew they were going to be good.  They’d only lost three players from the previous year and almost all of the current starters were in Standard VI, the oldest students.   For Independence Day, the boys played against some of the 18-25 year olds from the village.  They went 9-1 with the last lose coming during their final game and after hours of playing. 

Throughout October, the male teachers and I went up against the boys at least once or twice a week.  The boys beat us nearly every time.  Now, I’m not saying that the teachers and I are great, but we could set and occasionally put down a nice spike.  Only thing was the boys could do this exact same thing, except without letting the ball ever touch the ground.  Not every boy could spike hard over the net, and maybe just one or two of them ever got to this point, but you could bet that they would never let the ball drop.  This was where they had the upper hand on the teachers and any other team that they played.

In the zone championships, the boys dominated the other three teams, not letting another team score more than 7 or 8 points.  Practice got a little more intense after that with practice occurring at least two times a week.  We figured the more the boys played, the better prepared they’d be for district.

 

When district came along about a week and a half later, the teachers and I turned into psychiatrists, trying to keep away all of the demons that had haunted the boys last year.  I was especially focused on being a calming voice during the matches.  I knew that if they boys got stressed or nervous, they would do the same thing that they had done the year before.

For the first match of the district tournament, the boys played, what I believe, was the second best team out there.  The boys won a tight first game only to lose by a larger margin in the second game.  You could tell that during that second game, nerves were high - spikes were going out of bounds, the boys were hesitant to go hard after the ball.  That sort of thing.  The boys began the final game of the match with the ball and our best server up to serve.  This boy was particularly prone to nerves, so the coaches and I were holding our breath on the sideline.  As soon as the boy knocked the first one over the net, though, we knew that we could relax.  He went on to serve 15 straight points and win the first round match!

Jose, the star server

The second match was a little less stressful and the boys won easily in two sets.  We were going to the finals for the second straight year!  As we watched the next match, it became evident that we would be going against San Marcos, the team that we had lost to the following year.  Instead of appearing nervous, the boys looked confident.  They had had all day to watch San Marcos play.  They knew their strengths and weaknesses and they knew which players to keep the ball away from.  San Marcos, however, had confidence in knowing that they would be playing the same team they had beat the previous year.  This knowledge, especially for primary school students, can add a lot of confidence. 

The mentality of both teams appeared early on.  San Marcos came out hot while the boys from my village seemed shaken.  The nerves of last year’s loss had surfaced again.  This was particularly evident in our strongest player, the one who had served 15 straight points earlier in the day.  He could not keep the ball in bounds.  Every time he’d hit it, it’d sore out of bounds.  The coaches decided to sit him for a bit and I went over and spoke to him to try and calm his nerves.  In his place, the coaches put in the smallest and youngest boy on the team.  I think he goes up to about my waste.  Everyone watching laughed.  We had just replaced our best player with this kid? San Marcos took notice and started targeting the boy, but every time they’d hit it to him, he would handle it.  The boys would go on to win the first game!

The second game was no less nerve wracking, however.  Again, we got down early, and the boys had to work on digging themselves out of a four or five point hole.  The coaches decided that if there was a time the star player was needed, it was then.  He completely turned the game around and brought the boys up 19-18, and it was his serve.  He bulleted the final six serves over the net.  The boys were district champions!! Next stop, Belize City for Nationals!

In the week and a half leading up to nationals, the teachers and I continued to play (and lose) to the students, usually two matches a day four days a week.  The day before nationals, the parents and players got together to do a prayer service.  The parents gathered around the students and prayed and the Catholic students lit their prayer candles and let them burn throughout the night.  Not only were the parents praying for a win, but also for a safe trip the following day.  We were going to the big city! By village standards, that’s a scary place.  As soon as the service was finished, everyone left to go get some sleep.  We would need it since we would be leaving at 2:30 in the morning so that we could get to the city by 9:00.

As soon as 2:30 struck, we were off!  In order to catch the bus that would take us up to the city, we had to ride in the back of a truck a ways.  Since I didn’t think it would be a great idea to sit on the side of the truck, I decided to take the bucket full of coffee.  Little did I know that it was scalding hot and had literally been boiling five minutes earlier.  As I sat down, I noticed that top was a little hot, but nothing I couldn’t handle.  It wasn’t until we got going up and down the hills leaving my village that I realized I had made a bad decision.  Have you ever had boiling coffee poured on your ass?  Neither have I, but I would imagine that the pain would be something close to what I experienced as nearly boiling coffee splashed up against me, with only a top separating us.  At one point, to try and escape the pain, I half sat on one of the kid’s knees.  He yelled and said, “Move Mr. Daniel! Your butt’s too hot!!”  Yeah, if only he knew how I was actually feeling.  Luckily, we had to make a quick stop and I put some clothes I had between myself and the seat.  This did the trick. 

The rest of the ride was incredible and far from anything that I would ever experience in the U.S.  First of all, we were riding in the back of a truck to get from point A to point B.  That would never happen as part of a school trip in the States and definitely could be considered unsafe for the students.  The drive itself, though, was amazing!  It was early in the morning and there were no clouds in the sky.  Even the moon was hiding.  For half the trip, the boys, teachers, and I just looked up at the stars.  I showed them the few constellations that I knew and we even saw about five or six shooting stars.  Every time, the boys were “Ooo” and “Aahh”.

As we approached the area the bus was supposed to pick us up, someone told us that a bus full of kids had just left the intersection… Great, the charter left us.  We sped down the road for about 15 minutes trying to catch it.  Once we caught sight of it, everyone started flashing their lights and their phones.  Anything to get the bus to stop! Finally, it pulled over and one of the teachers ran over to see if it was in fact our bus.  Turns out, it was a group of disabled children heading to the Special Olympics event also in Belize City.  I can only imagine what the reactions of the parents and children on the bus were as they watched this truck driving after them maniacally flashing its lights and doing everything to get it to stop only to turn around and drive off. 

That whole portion of the trip brought some interesting and very mixed emotions to mind.  My initially reaction was, “This is so awesome! Kids in the States don’t know what they’re missing out on!”  But then I began to consider, “What if something were to happen while we were driving and all of these kids were hurt, or worse.”  On the one hand, I was thinking how lucky the kids were to have such an experience that they will never forget.  That is probably something that will never happen again in their life, whereas in the States, students go on countless field trips where no trip in is any different than the other.  On the other hand, how unfortunate is it that there is such poor infrastructure in a country that students are potentially putting their lives at risk to go play in a national tournament.  These two conflicting ideas wrestled around in my head for the rest of the trip once we had finally caught the real bus up to Belize City.

The ride went pretty smoothly.  One of the boys puked literally five minutes before we arrived.  Did he tell anyone he was feeling sick? No.  Did he try and find a bag? No.  Did he try and hold it in until we arrived? No.  He just puked freely all around his seat while everyone else looked around in utter disgust.  We’ll have to work on that with him next time we make a long trip…

After the seven and a half hour trip, it only made sense for the Belize Sports Council to put us in the first game against the team from Cayo.  There were six teams there (one for each district), so the teams were divided into two divisions: North and South.  I’d be a liar if I said that I wasn’t nervous during the first game.  There I was shaking with nerves and telling the kids to calm down and just play hard.  “Take a deep breath and knock the ball over the net!”  Coming in, I was expecting our boys to be competitive, but, I mean, it was nationals.  They were up against the best of the best. 

I'm not lying when I say the boys are small

The first match, the boys were nervous, but they slowly started to calm down.  When they began, they were all wearing their big bulky shoes.  They call them tennis shoes, but these aren’t tennis shoes.  They’re a bunch of knock off Air Jordans that way about a pound each.  They serve the boys as athletic shoes as well as dress shoes for any special occasion.  Other than that, they wear knock off Crocs (that’s right, there is, in fact, such a thing as knock off Crocs).  The boys had never gotten used to playing in the shoes that they had, so they took them off and started playing in socks.  I mean, if you have one pair of shoes that are supposed to be dress shoes, why play volleyball in them?

The match was close at first, but once the boys moved their shoes, they started to relax and dominate like they had all season!  It was awesome! They were hitting there sets and the occasional spike always seemed to drop in there.  Cayo was tough, but they had nothing on San Vicente!  The boys were 1-0, all but guaranteeing them a spot in the semifinals.

 

The next match was the one that I was more worried about.  We were up against Stann Creek, and it was obvious just by looking at the S.C. team that they were no Cayo.  These boys were athletes and all of them about a head taller than any of our boys.  I had done the figuring beforehand, though.  We could lose this game, but as long as Stann Creek beat Cayo, we’d be in the semifinals for sure.  Not sure if you’d call that optimism necessarily, but what can I say, I call it like I see it. 

The game started, and again it was a close start, but then something crazy happened – the boys started winning.  And not just winning, but dominating in every facet of the game.  Stann Creek was a great team, but the boys played nearly flawless volleyball (by middle school standards).  Stann Creek would put down spikes and our boys would go and dig it out and knock it right back at them.  It was incredible!

I wasn’t the only one impressed either.  By this point in the day, people were starting to show up.  No one had expected the little team from poor Toledo to come in and dominate like they were.  The coaches from the rival teams were even talking.  I heard one coach mention, “Wow, those boys are good, even without shoes!”  The boys went on to win that match in two sets.  They finished group play 2-0 and as the top seed going into the semifinals! Whatever happened from then on, I was going to be fine.  The boys had completely exceeded my expectations.  From then on, I would be proud no matter if they finished first or fourth.

Getting prepped for the second game

Unfortunately, I had to go to meeting in Belmopan, so I wasn’t able to see the last two games that they played.  The first game was against one of the teams from the North. The boys dominated, winning it in two sets.  They were 3-0 and heading to the national championship game!!

The game was a rematch against Stann Creek, except this time, Stann Creek wasn’t messing around.  They came out ready to win.  The boys lost first set by a pretty large margin.  I think that nerves had something to do with it.  I only wish that I could have been there to try and calm them down.  Maybe we’d have done the breathing exercises I tried to teach them early.  I don’t know.  Anything to try and get them to relax and focus on the game.  For the second set, they made it close, but lost again.

When I heard the news, I was heartbroken for the boys.  They had put everything that they had into the season.  I knew that a lot of them were going to be really upset and I wasn’t sure how well the coaches would encourage them.  I wanted to tell them that they did incredible!! I mean, jeez, they were the second best team in the nation!! How awesome is that!  I don’t know if I have ever felt as proud in another group of individuals as I did when I found out they got second.  Yeah, it’s hard to lose the last game, but to be second in the nation is something that most people would love to have.  The heart that they showed to get there was incredible! They didn’t get as far as they did because they had the best equipment or the nicest court.  They practiced on a muddy, grassy field every day.  They got so far because they had heart and determination.  When everyone else laughed at their size or overlooked them because they figured that no one from Toledo had a chance, our boys showed up and dominated. They played determined to keep the ball from hitting the ground.  They played to prove that something good can and will come out of Toledo. 

I can only hope that they continue to take this same determination into life. That they show people that just because you’re raised in a place that may not have the amenities that much of the country has, that doesn’t mean you don’t have a chance.  For them to win in life, they’ll have to use the same heart and hard work that they showed during the entire volleyball season.  Even though they may not win everything, they’ll see that the hard work will always make them better. 

Next up: soccer followed by track and field.  I know the boys will work as hard as they can to reach the best of their abilities, even if it means playing barefoot or in socks.   With that hard work, I know that they’ll show everyone what all a little team from Toledo can do.