My Journal

When I got to Beijing in August, I saw a listing for Lacrosse in one of the expat directories and sent a message off to the organizer. I didn’t think much about it until a week ago, when I got a nice email back saying that they had a clinic for students the previous weekend and 122 new lacrosse players appeared with only 4 coaches. They could use some help. On Friday afternoon close to 5pm, I got an email with the Chinese equivalent of MapQuest(read: Characters, not roman alphabet) on where to go on Sunday afternoon. It looked to be a place between the 4th and 5th ring roads (I live in the dead center), so if figured it would take me 2 hours on my electric bike to get “there”---not really knowing where “there” was.

An hour and 45 minutes into my ride northwest of Beijing into the University area, I found myself stopping people and comparing my map symbols with landmarks. Just like the US, 1 in 4 people sent me the wrong way. I finally started comparing symbols on gates to my map and found my destination…or so I thought. University campuses in Beijing are larger than US campuses and “lacrosse” is not a known term that people can understand. Anyway, I finally got to the “field”, which are also multiple basketball courts hidden between apartments and dorm buildings.

On the bike ride out, I was hoping that most of the students would understand English and then realized that none of my current Mandarin vocabulary comes close to helping teach lacrosse. Oh well, another adventure in the making.

Today, there are over 100 students from 7+ Universities and only 5 coaches to run a 2-hour practice. I was lucky to have Jiang Bo be my translator. She has been playing Lacrosse for one month and gladly helped teach the drills and translate my goofy terms like the “box” – the area between the head and shoulders where the stick head should be protected. The term “cradle” literally translates to “rock the baby”, so teaching the students how to cradle, first meant breaking the natural position they held the sticks when they heard the term..ugh.

Most of my students spoke survival English – what is your name, where are you from, where do you live; I do not even speak survival Mandarin yet. The head coach asked the 3 Americans to do self-introductions – In Mandarin, I either said that “my name is Chris” or “I am hungry Chris”. I am pretty sure that I mispronounced it but they appreciated the effort – I got a bunch of giggles.

Since lacrosse equipment is not available in Beijing, 150 kwik-stix were sent from the US. So we learned the basics with these short sticks and wiffle balls, both men and women at the same time. We ran drills for an hour then broke into 10 person teams and went full “field” for the next hour. It was very gratifying to watch my pupils pass, throw and scoop the ball after such a short period of time and be effective on the “field” both offensively and defensively.

The ride back home took almost 2 hours through very industrial and dirty areas of Beijing. My bike battery died about 10km away from my apartment, so the last hour was a brutal, slow pedal with 2 hills/ramps to ascend. It was great to spend an afternoon interacting with new friends with a common link and watching people learn a new sport.

Teaching lacrosse in Mandarin is definitely harder than teaching in English, but the outcome is just as gratifying.