La Locura de Marzo

La Locura de Marzo, March Madness, in Spanish it sounds like some kind of illness, a time of year where everyone goes temporarily crazy- like Mal de Mayo, a time of year where more people have diarrhea. In some ways, it is an epidemic of sorts. People who never care about basketball fill out brackets and all of the sudden depend upon the final scores of games between teams they know nothing about, and chose to win because they like the mascot, or the geographical location of the university, or maybe the sound of the school’s name. Or maybe that’s just me.
Every year I participate in my family’s brackets for March Madness, and I have tried all of these tricks to pick my winning team, without much luck. Some years I even tired learning a bit about the teams or at least asking someone who professed know, but to be honest I haven’t had much success with any of these methods.
This year is going to be different. “Why?” you ask, “Surely in Guatemala you haven’t been keeping up with college basketball,” you think. And this is true. I didn’t even know college basketball was happening until March came and the catchy title “March Madness” reminded me just what mayhem was around the corner. But I still think this year will be different. It will be different because I am now a basketball player, which gives me the extra intuitive push that comes from being on the inside. Sure I may have randomly filled out my brackets, organizing them just so, so that my two favorite teams (UF/UNC) face off in the finals. But random choice and intuition may go far with my newfound love of the game.
If some of you remember, this is not my first attempt to break into the highly competitive Patzún women’s basketball league. The combustive combination of my height and lack of skill and/or knowledge of the game, which seemed to cause me to foul a lot in practice, intimidated the first team I attempted to join. I gave up on the dream for a while, but it was reborn as I watched my average height site-mate dominate the tiny Guatemalans on the court. When a kindergartener told me with wide eyes, “Seño, you’re a GIANT,” I thought of the quote, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and knew I had to use my power for good.
After mentioning my interest to enough random people, I finally hit upon someone who actually played on a basketball team and invited me to play with them (example #1 of the effectiveness of randomness and intuition). That is how I ended up playing on the Magisterio team. This is an elite, handpicked team of primary school teachers, most of whom I work with. Their patience, encouragement, and willingness to teach me EVERYTHING has been amazing. I guess it’s good that I found a team of teachers because they have had to teach me everything from defensive positioning, to how long I can stay in the paint, to how to dribble.
I have played in 3 games so far and I would say I am making great strides. In my first game I got called for traveling at least 4 times, and I don’t even hold the ball that often, but my coach said I was doing great because the other team got distracted by staring at me when I got the ball.
My second game was a Patzún classic, gringa vs. gringa- my team versus my site-mate’s. We lost by a narrow margin and I almost fouled out (according to Maggie, I still don’t know how to tell when I have been called for a foul). But I was improving; after the game I was compared to Larry Bird (by my site-mate) and Shaquille O’Neil (by me, ‘cuz I’m huge). In my 3rd game I only traveled once, and I made my first two baskets of my basketball career! When I made my first basket my team went CRAZY. They are amazing. They make baskets all the time and no one cheers, but they encourage me continuously and never tire of getting excited over the small steps of progress I show. I never really liked basketball before, but they have made me love it. And that is why I have high hopes for my brackets this year, and for another Gringa vs. Gringa face off in the city championships. I’ll keep you posted.