Ecko’s team was getting more and more attention. The year before, the South Sudanese had placed third in the tournament, but his boys had stolen the show with their rim-rattling dunks and gravity-defying blocked shots. What the scouts and the media loved was their enthusiasm for the game, their endless hustle, their selfless play, their support for one another, and their smiles. They came from a troubled land, but they were proud of their country and wanted the world to know it.
“Got any five-stars?” asked an assistant from Missouri.
“They’re all five-stars,” Ecko said. “I don’t fool with four-stars.”
“So you’re going all the way?”
“We got it won, fellas. My boys are already at Disney World celebrating.”
“Seriously, who’s your best?”
“That would be Mr. Marial.”
“Okay, okay. I think he’s spoken for. Who’s number two?”
“A guard named Alek Garang.”
“From where?”
“Juba, but he may go to Ridgewood this season.”
The coach shrugged it off and feigned disinterest. It was well accepted that the South Sudanese who were playing high school ball in the U.S. were a year or two ahead of their friends back home. The competition and coaching were simply stronger in the U.S. The great ones would catch up and compete at a higher level. The good ones would likely not make it.
“Who you watching?” Ecko asked another coach.
“Americans?”
“No, we know them already. The foreign kids.”
“Well, everybody’s buzzing about that Koosh Koosh kid?”
“Beg your pardon.”
“You know, that big guy from Latvia with the last name that sounds like Koosh Koosh. Only he can pronounce it. No one can spell it.”
“Latvia?”
“Yeah, he plays for the Croatians?”
“Makes perfect sense.”
“One of those Eastern European teams. Kid’s six ten and can shoot from mid-court.”
“We got three of those,” Frankie said with a straight face.
“Gimme their names.”
“Not now. You gotta watch ’em.”
“Yeah, yeah,” his friend said, waving him off.
Other coaches, almost all of them assistants, came and went. There was a hospitality room in one of the luxury suites, and Ecko and Frankie parked themselves there for lunch and enjoyed the camaraderie of old and new friends.
* * *
·?·?·
After dinner at the hotel, the team gathered in a small conference room on the second level. Frankie passed out schedules and practice plans to each player. Ecko called the team to order and demanded attention. He said, “Okay, here’s our schedule for tomorrow, so listen carefully. At seven a.m. sharp we meet here in this room for the first call home. Tomorrow is July the fourteenth and your families are waiting to hear from you around two p.m. East Africa is seven hours ahead of Orlando. Breakfast is here at the hotel at seven-thirty. I know you’re still jet-lagged, so go to bed early tonight. Very early. At eight-fifteen, the vans leave for practice back at a high school. We practice from nine to noon, three hours and it will be intense. Memorize the practice plans before you go to sleep tonight and memorize them again before breakfast. At noon we return here to shower and eat lunch. At one-thirty we leave for UCF where we’ll stay for an hour, watch part of a practice, then leave at three and go to Rollins College to check out the venue and watch part of another practice. At five we leave Rollins, come back here, change, leave here at six-thirty, go back to the high school for a one-hour shootaround. Back here for dinner at eight, bed at ten.”
As he spoke his tone became sharper, and by the time he finished he sounded like a drill sergeant. “Got it?” he barked.
The responses were the usual, casual acknowledgments that the coach had said something.
Ecko looked at Quinton Majok and asked, “Quinton, who, in your opinion, is the dumbest player on this team?”
Majok, already established as one of the team clowns, pointed without hesitation to his roommate, Awino Leyano. “Him,” he said.
Ecko said, “Stand up, Awino.”
He slowly unwound all eighty inches and smiled at his coach. Ecko said, “Okay, Awino, give me back tomorrow’s schedule, in perfect order.”
Awino stopped smiling and said, “Well, first of all, Coach, I’m much smarter than Quinton.”
“We’ll see. The schedule, please.”
“Okay, here at seven to call home, then breakfast at seven-thirty, then take the van to practice, from nine to noon, three whole hours which is a lot more than I need, then back here for lunch. Leave here at one-thirty for UCF, stay there until three, then go to Rollins, stay there until five, then back here to change and go to a shootaround, then come back here and eat.”