Full Court Press 3

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Sports are huge in Greece. They’ve had professional sports here since the first Olympic games in the 10th century B.C. They love competition, they love fighting, and they love being fans, having an opinion on everything and yelling at refs, players, and coaches. Athletics are organized differently here. There are no high school or university teams, everything is organized at the club level. So every district in Athens has a club that supports various sports at various levels and divisions. My club, Panionios, is located in a district called Nea Smirni. We are the oldest club in Athens, having been started in 1890 in a community of Greek people in Turkey, aptly named Smirni. They escaped Turkey in the middle of the night and established Nea Smirni (New Smirni) in Athens. Needless to say, with that kind of history, people are very loyal to our club. But every club has some kind of history that they are proud of. “We are the most historical team in Athens because -----“ seems to be a common theme amongst clubs. My club has futbol, basketball, swimming, track, volleyball, water polo among our sports. And we have every level of competition. So four year old children have swimming lessons in the kiddie pool next to the professional water polo team practicing in the Olympic sized pool with the Futbol team warming up on the field. Parents sit outside the gym, next to the futbol stadium as it gets dark out and sip coffee and gossip while their children practice. No doubt they are discussing politics or the latest Panionios game, which seem to be the most popular topics of conversation.

People especially love soccer here but they are almost as passionate about men’s basketball. Women’s basketball hasn’t achieved the same level of fan base but people are still crazy. For men’s basketball and soccer, people huddle into cafes and watch games on television or pack the gyms in. I have never seen such crazy fans in my whole life. Nothing in America compares. I loved our fans at Iowa State but considering they didn’t throw cigarette butts at the refs or swear profanities at the top of their lungs, they seem much more reserved than the Greeks. I suppose I must give you some background on Greek people because their behavior at games is not an anomaly, it is right in character. Greek people love confrontation, they love coffee, and cigarettes (both stimulants), and they aren’t embarrassed to make complete idiots out of themselves. People yell on the street at a drop of a hat. They may pull their car over and scream at someone who cut them off or they may argue loudly on a corner with everyone in the neighborhood listening. Its just not a big deal. But at sporting events, the thirst for confrontation is easily satisfied. I may not know a lot of Greek but I do know the swear words and people use them liberally. You can’t imagine what people scream without reserve. And not one person looks at them crazy, its perfectly normal to say something about the ref’s mother as loud as you possibly can.

So at the men’s games, throngs of 20-something year old men cram into high school sized gyms, with their drums and flags, buzzed off stimulants, and go completely berserk. It looks more like a mosh pit at a rock concert with men jumping on each other, shirts off, banners waving. They sing in unison the whole game, yell vulgarities without restraint and love to throw coins at the opposing team’s heads as they go into the locker room. Fights break out on the court, in the stands, and the police are all in riot gear with plastic shields everywhere. Last year there were riots with tear gas after cross town rivals tied in a futbol match and this year a team got punished because their fans started a fight with the police during a game. So for three games it was “closed door” which mean the game is on television but the arena is empty. Every week just about you can witness it first hand at a game or catch the highlights on television. I was at a men’s game last month where the police chased the fans from one side of the arena to the other with clubs. Men in headlocks had friends coming to the rescue only to find themselves caught while the first got away. The problem being that the police are Greek as well. The next week I watched highlights of fans at a futbol match pulling unbolted chairs from the stands and throwing them at opposing fans while running out onto the field and breaking windows along the way. I don’t know what the Greek word for “inappropriate” is but I’m pretty sure it is rarely used to describe antics within the athletic arena. It seems most things are forgivable if they are done in the spirit and passion of competition. But the thing about Greeks is that no one pulls out guns, knives, or thinks about suing each other. They fight and then its over, they might even go out for coffee together afterwards. Fighting is all in a days work for them. It keeps life exciting.

Women’s basketball games don’t have quite as many fans but Greek people are still the same. Just this last week as we were headed to the game my teammates were talking about fighting the other team. When they say they want to “kick some butt” they aren’t talking about winning the game, they mean it literally. On a regular basis, someone has to be restrained, a player, a fan, or a team president. And it isn’t just the Greeks, Americans over here let it all out also because after getting undercut all game, sometimes we just can’t take it anymore. There’s things I’ve seen that I barely believed my eyes. I’ve seen a coach get an opposing player in a head lock, I’ve seen bench clearing brawls, and quite frequently I watch my petite woman coach hit a player with a rolled up practice schedule. The girls are laughing hysterically but my coach is dead serious. Every time I think about how Americans would react to these kinds of hysterics, I laugh to myself. All you can do is laugh or join in the fight, and unfortunately, I have done both. In some sense it is really nice. Like I said, people just fight, get it all out in the open, and then its over. No ones job is threatened over it and we don’t have a team meeting afterwards to discuss how everyone is feeling. You just get over it and move on to the next fight, I mean game.