This past weekend I reassembled the Tokushima ALT basketball team in my effort to get back into playing shape by July. Our current team consists of a bunch of great guys, full of inspiring enthusiasm, excellent tenacity, superb work ethic, some can even speak a little Japanese… but NO basketball talent. The combination of an Aussie with a love for rugby, a Brit who prefers a little "footy" on the weekends, add in a Canadian just for the hell of it, then sprinkle in some Americans that have never played the game – you’ve got a recipe for an international crisis. Now… we do have one player besides myself that has played some organized ball in the past, but after two reconstructive knee surgeries to the same knee – as a concerned friend I’ve been encouraging him to consider the wheel chair leagues. That’s our current team we used against one of the top high school teams in Tokushima City this past weekend. Straggling into the gym this past Saturday morning at 9 something, 10 minutes late we found our competition with their full squad of probably 20 players deep fully warmed-up ready to play… I’m not gonna go into too much detail about what happened after that, but let me just say we weren’t ready to play. To make matters worse, that high school team never took their foot of the gas. After being up by over 20 or was it 40, I can’t remember – they continued to full court press us, never letting up a bit. This was only our first game back as a team and it was clear we were out of shape… we’ll play this team again in June and see how far we’ve come. But until then, baby steps….