Sussex Athletics

Why is it that being American, I am so disgusted by the lack of athleticism here in Britain?

I attended my first Sussex women’s basketball practice tonight. While I was extremely invigorated by the fact that I was on the court with a ball in my hands for the first time in goodness knows how long, I found the level of play astonishingly low. Frankly, these girls would barely make the second team of a high school varsity squad, never mind any sort of college team. And one of them had to leave early because she needed to get up early the next day for some sort of national tryouts. National?

One of the drills was very creative, demanding that three of us dribble the ball with one hand while passing a tennis ball between ourselves and performing a three-man-weave. This made complete sense to me, since it forces each player’s attention away from dribbling and toward the other players on the court, which is usually the goal of dribbling exercises. However, later on in the practice, the coach decided that his girls needed to learn to be more aggressive. Therefore, he was going to explain a new game that was totally different from basketball but would make them aggressive.

In this “game,” the object was to get the ball over the endline. Each play could consist of only one forward pass, and players could run with the ball. The defending team could stop the ball only by tagging the player holding the ball. The offense had three chances to get the ball over the endline for five points but could opt to shoot a three-pointer for three points.

Is this starting to sound like a familiar game to anyone?

And the coach thought he was being SO innovative. The sad part was, most of the girls were actually learning these rules for the first time. Oh American football, what a snob you have made of me.