A team of Trique Indian boys that recently swept a youth basketball tournament despite the players’ generally short stature and most of them playing barefoot, have earned acclaim in Mexico and abroad.
The team from the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca won all six of their games to become this year’s champions at the International Festival of Mini-Basketball held recently in Cordoba, Argentina.
Other teams in the tournament dubbed the Trique Indian team the “the barefoot mice from Mexico” because they are shorter than the other competitors, said Ernesto Merino, one of the team’s coaches and a Trique Indian.
He said his players compensate for their short stature with “strength, speed and resistance.”
Children are given tennis shoes when they join the team, but many do not wear the sneakers because they are accustomed to being barefoot, Merino said.
Merino said they grow up in large, poor families who struggle to find the money to buy clothes and shoes.
“For them it’s normal to not have shoes, to walk barefoot,” he said.
The team’s performance won them a minute of applause on Wednesday on the floor of Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies, as well as accolades from Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and basketball experts.
“The victories of the Trique Indian team from Oaxaca’s Academy of Indigenous Basketball make Mexicans proud,” Pena Nieto said in a tweet.
Horacio Muratore, president of the International Basketball Federation-Americas, which organizes the annual tournament, said the boys were the best players.
“These boys deserved [the championship] more than anyone,” Muratore wrote on the organization’s Web site.
The team’s achievement has come at a particularly sensitive time for Mexico, which is agonizing over the poor performance of its once well-regarded national team. El Tri have barely kept alive their hope of qualifying for next year’s World Cup in Brazil.
Merino said the boys who played at the tournament in Argentina are part of a basketball program designed to help poor children in Oaxaca, which is one of Mexico’s poorest and most marginalized areas. The Oaxaca State Government gives them tennis shoes, uniforms and a monthly US$46 stipend.
“We see a basketball as an opportunity to grow in life,” Merino said.
The program was started three years ago and currently has 40 children enrolled, including five girls.
To enter the program, children must have good grades in school, speak their native tongue and help with chores at home.
“We want them to be prepared in life,” Merino said.
‘SOURCE OF PRIDE’: Newspapers rushed out special editions and the government sent their congratulations as Shohei Ohtani became the first player to enter the 50-50 club Japan reacted with incredulity and pride yesterday after Shohei Ohtani became the first player in Major League Baseball to record 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single season. The Los Angeles Dodgers star from Japan made history with a seventh-inning homer in a 20-4 victory over the Marlins in Miami. “We would like to congratulate him from the bottom of our heart,” top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters in Tokyo. “We sincerely hope Mr Ohtani, who has already accomplished feat after feat and carved out a new era, will thrive further,” he added. The landmark achievement dominated Japanese morning news
When Wang Tao ran away from home aged 17 to become a professional wrestler, he knew it would be a hard slog to succeed in China’s passionate but underdeveloped scene. Years later, he has endured family disapproval, countless side gigs and thousands of hours of brutal training to become China’s “Belt and Road Champion” — but the struggle is far from over. Despite a promising potential domestic market, the Chinese pro wrestling community has been battling for recognition and financial stability for decades. “I have done all kinds of jobs [on the side]... Because in the end, it is very
No team in the CPBL can surpass the Taipei Dome attendance record set by the CTBC Brothers, except when the Brothers team up with Taiwanese rock band Mayday. A record-high 40,000 fans turned out at the indoor baseball venue on Saturday for Brothers veteran Chou Szu-chi’s first farewell game, which was followed by a mini post-game concert featuring Mayday. This broke the previous CPBL record of 34,506 set by the Brothers in early last month, when K-pop singer Hyuna performed after the game, and the dome’s overall record of 37,890 set in early March, which featured the Brothers and the
With a quivering finger, England Subbuteo veteran Rudi Peterschinigg conceded the free-kick that sent his country’s World Cup quarter-final into extra-time before smashing his plastic goalkeeper on the floor in frustration. In the genteel southern English town of Tunbridge Wells, 300 elite players have gathered to play the game they love. “I won’t say this is the best weekend I’ve ever had in my life, but it’s certainly in the top two,” said Hughie Best, 58, who flew in from Perth, Australia, to compete and commentate at the event. Tunbridge Wells is the “spiritual home” of Subbuteo, which was invented there in 1946