Greek Coaches

My team from last year, Sporting, brought over an American post player this season. I’d met her and hung out a few times, even going over to what is now her apartment to see my old landlord (yup, still walking around with his pants undone). Anyway, she was very homesick and sick of the coach yelling at her. I told her that it gets better, Athens grows on you and the coach calms down once he asserts his authority. He assumes all Americans are going to be attitude problems so he tries to set the tone early with his own attitude. But he let up on screaming at me last year after he realized I was just trying to play (and I threatened to go home a few timesJ). Of course winning helped the situation as well.

Last Monday my current coach asked me after practice if I had heard about the American for Sporting. No, I said. Well…. she went home. She packed her bags, bought her own plane ticket to America, flew home and then called our Greek agent and said she was quitting basketball. She just couldn’t take it here with the coach screaming at her. He just doesn't understand that its hard enough your first time overseas. That you are all alone all day long, homesick, and the only time you see people is to come to practice and then you get screamed at. In some ways it is a little funny. I mean everyone thinks about packing up and leaving but then you get over it and laugh about how hard it was. But I am sad for her too. I mean she will never have fond memories of Greece and she never allowed herself to grow as an individual, to get through the hard part to a place where life over here is enjoyable.

The coaches over here scream a lot. Greek people in general scream a lot. Even my nice little female coach this year has turrets. She goes ballistic at times, just not at me. its funny though I mean coaches are similar no matter what country you are in. Its like the only profession, except for the military, where verbal abuse, kicking, screaming, and basically acting like a two year old having a tantrum, is expected and encouraged. Like it’s a sign that you must really want to win. I think its more a sign they have an anger management problem.

Take my friend over here. She went to college in the states. Was coached by a well known individual. The coach was adored by the media, by the fans, a good coach, wife, mother. At an especially important practice they had throngs of media in the stands, on the sidelines. The team started warming up but it wasn’t to the coaches satisfaction. So she calls them into a huddle in the middle of the court. This little 5’6” brunette stares up at her players towering above her and blocking her face and voice from the media and says, “if you don’t pick it up, I will fucking kill every goddamn one of you.” Are you serious? Where in any other workplace environment is this considered appropriate?

This isn’t to say that there aren’t verbally abusive bosses anywhere else or that I am so well composed that I would never scream. And it isn’t to say that there aren’t a lot of wonderful coaches that aren’t this way. Its just that I think most coaches forgot what they learned in psych 101. Is it Pavlov’s experiment? Give the dog a treat and he will ring that bell every time. Tell him he sucks and is a horrible dog and he probably won’t do what you want.

But as I’ve mentioned before, while they scream more over here, it is much more culturally acceptable. Coaches really could hit a player or say something racist. I mean a coach last year hit a player from another team….. on two different occasions. And he still has his job, hasn’t been sued, fined, nothing. He probably got a raise. He literally put a girl in a head lock. Who does that? Besides Bobby Knight i mean. Its just different here. People scream about everything. So its not just limited to the head coach, it’s the fans, the players, the owners, the presidents. All screaming, “asshole, and f you, and f that”. The Greek girls mostly laugh about it in between screaming back at them. Its like yelling, laughing, yelling, laughing, you get confused as to what emotion goes with what expression. It is difficult at first especially since you don’t have an assistant coach who speaks English to help you out but you get over it and then suddenly your laughing, screaming, laughing, screaming. And then its like. Whatever, when in Rome…