During prac, I helped coach the school’s boys’ basketball team. I thought this would be a ton of fun, but it was a bit frustrating. For starters, no one really cared about the team except for two or three kids, and sometimes we’d have to hold a practice with only that many players. The others knew that they wouldn’t be kicked off the team because we had so few players, so they’d skip practice often, coming up with various lame excuses. Basketball isn’t really the most popular sport down here, so that didn’t help.
When I say that I “helped coach”, I’m glad to say that I wasn’t just another warm body there to keep the kids on track. I ran a lot of the practices, got the kids going on the drills, tried to teach them some plays, etc. I was surprised to find that I knew quite a few things that the other coach (a teacher at the school) didn’t; it’s possible that basketball wasn’t really his thing, and he just wanted to help these kids however he could.
During my prac, the team had their first game against another school, and while the other coach hung out at the scorer’s table, I stayed with the team and did the actual coaching for the game. I was pretty pleased with this, and was glad that it was just a friendly game – at least, I thought it was to be a friendly game. It didn’t really turn out that way.
I tried to put five boys on the floor who would put in some effort, but like I’ve already said, we didn’t have enough of those. One kid, a Year 12 from Rex’s homeroom (and one of the only students expected to go on to university), ended up playing almost the entire game, both because he was so good, and because few other players felt like giving 50%, let alone the customary 110%. They mostly just dragged ass for the whole game. A few of the less-skilled kids put in some solid effort, so I gave them plenty of playing time, but some of the kids who had some talent didn’t feel like doing a damn thing, so they practiced their bench-warming abilities.
One kid on the team had a pretty bad temper. He was this tiny little guy, but other teachers said he’d gotten his temperament from his dad, who was batshit crazy. Ditto for this kid. I subbed him in early in the second half (he’d already been complaining because he hadn’t gotten much floor time, but when he did had gotten on the court, he couldn’t be bothered to move faster than a brisk walk), and I was instantly regretful. He was fouled after about 20 seconds – a reach, nothing horrible or anything – and responded by accepting the in-bounds pass, turning, and heaving the ball at the culprit’s head. Needless to say, I took him off the floor right then and he had his butt parked on the bench for the rest of the game.
In the end, well…we took it in the end. I forget what the final score was, but it was awfully close to that Village basketball game I played. I knew that with the compete level most of these kids had, they wouldn’t be anywhere close to competitive for meaningful games, and that made me feel really badly for the few kids who did care and wanted to do well. I’d love to give this one a happy ending, but here’s how it ended: in my last practice with the kids, I was playing 3-on-3 with them (it was one of those rare times where we mustered up 5 kids), and I tripped over a kid who was standing still (the little one who’d pitched the ball at somebody’s head, no less). Re-sprained my right ankle. The coach gave me a ride home, but with a fresh sprain and no crutches, walking anywhere the next day was pretty much impossible, and given the amount of walking I did to get to and from prac each day, that just wasn’t happening. It would be the one day I’d miss. Fortunately, Rex was so pleased about me helping with extracurriculars that he didn’t even mind; he just wanted me to relax and feel better. What a guy, eh?
One of our pre-prac university assignments was to find places where you might take a class you were teaching for a field trip (or as they called it, “an 
excursion”). We needed to scout out the educational value of the location, as well as anything else that would be useful knowledge – student discounts, availability of guided tours, etc. I checked out the Adelaide Oval (considered the most scenic cricket stadium in the world, and the only major one that still uses a manual scoreboard), and The Bay Discovery Centre (a museum down at the beach). I won’t bore you with the details; I didn’t end up taking any classes to either place anyway. We did go on a couple of excursions with the students at Windsor Gardens, although they maybe should’ve been called “adventures”: obviously, not all kids are going to behave on those excursions – even with an army of teachers accompanying them – and their misbehaviour is even more pronounced when they’re out in public.
Rex and the rest of the English department had planned an upcoming unit on pirate literature, so they decided to take the whole Year 10 level to see the third “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie. The theatre was at a mall, so it was a little bit tricky to make sure the kids all stuck together and stayed calm. It was even trickier once the movie was over, when we gave them about half an hour to grab lunch at the food court – getting them all back together was, predictably, a little tough. All in all, though, they were fairly well-behaved, which was a bit of a relief.
Our second excursion was for the Year 10s in Work Education – we took them to a job fair at the Adelaide Fair Grounds (at the south end of the CBD). They had pretty much all day to walk around and check out all the different booths set up, advertising different jobs and careers, and we didn’t have to watch them too closely; I actually got to hang out with some of my university classmates, since there were a ton of schools at this thing, and several of my friends were there accompanying their classes. Everything was great…until the end of the day, when one of our students got in a fight with a kid from another school. I’m not too sure about the specifics – who started it, or why it started – but apparently it was over a girl. It didn’t last long, and no one really got hurt, but it sure did add some drama to the end of the day.
Around the start of March, I’d heard that one of my favourite bands, Alexisonfire, would be playing in Adelaide at the end of May. They’re from St. Catharines, Ontario, and they brought another Canadian band with them: Moneen, from Brampton. (Cancer Bats, a Toronto band that I’d met before after my friend Dane’s band had played a show with them, had been on the rest of the tour, but weren’t making the Australia trip for some reason.) Anyway, Brett, Ben, Jodie, Mike and I all decided to go to the concert, and we were pretty stoked about it.
The opening band, Blindspott, was from New Zealand. We’d never heard of them before, and for good reason: they weren’t very good. (It probably didn’t help that we were impatiently waiting for the bands we actually wanted to see.) We used the time to buy a few drinks, and I grabbed a Moneen CD; I was pretty excited for their set too, and had a feeling that I might want to listen to their stuff afterwards.
When Moneen finally came on, I was pleasantly surprised: they put on a fantastic, high-energy show, and even though I only knew a few of their songs, I was very impressed. George (the lead singer/screamer from Alexisonfire) even came out to lend a hand on one of their songs. The highlight of the set, though, was probably between songs, when Moneen’s lead singer noticed us standing near the front, and saw that I was wearing a Blue Jays hat; he assumed we were from Toronto, which was close enough, 
and while I couldn’t understand exactly what he said to us (we were hollering pretty loudly), it was obvious that he was pleased to see us there.
During Alexisonfire’s set, we managed to get even closer to the stage – so close, in fact, that when George climbed the side balcony and leapt into the crowd to surf back to the stage, I was among those who pushed him back onto it. 
(I thought it was pretty sweet at first, but he was shirtless by that time, and god damn was he sweaty.) It was an amazing set, though, and we thought it capped off the night perfectly…until, of course, the concert had ended and we went outside.
When we looked down the side alley of HQ (the bar/concert hall where the show was held), we saw the stage door…we also saw that no one was standing by it. By now our number was only three – Brett had gone home after too much beer, and Ben didn’t want to stick around to wait for bands he didn’t know very well, but Jodie, Mike and I decided we had some time to spare. 
The first band out the door was Blindspott, who looked at us, stuck their noses in the air, and walked right past – as if they thought we were there for them, and they were too cool for us. Lemme tell ya, though, that band is way too shitty to be thumbing their noses at potential fans. Anyway, Moneen came out before long, and posed for pictures with us; we also talked with them for quite awhile about how long they were in Australia for, where else they were playing, what they should try to see if they had any spare time (obviously we highly recommended Cairns), etc. 
The guys from Alexisonfire were happy to pose for pictures with us too, and I was able to make my friends back home pretty jealous when I posted those ones on Facebook.
A couple months later, Dane (the friend who’d played with Cancer Bats) and his band were playing a show that Alexisonfire was at, and he asked them if they remembered meeting me. He told me about it later, and I thought it was a pretty cool story: apparently George thought about it and correctly described the shirt I was wearing – coincidentally a Cancer Bats shirt – and said he’d thought it was a cool shirt, having never seen one like it before. Coincidentally again, Dane had given me the shirt before I left for Australia. How do you like them apples?
Sure, you might say that it seems silly to go to the other side of the world and see a concert you could’ve seen at home. But there’s no way we could’ve met those bands at a show in Ontario; the back alley would’ve been crowded with fans, instead of there being just a few of us. So maybe I saw a show I could’ve seen at home, but as for the story I came away with, I couldn’t have gotten it anywhere else.
Yen, one of the girls who organizes social events for the Village, got a few people together at the start of the semester to form a residence basketball team; I was one of those who signed up. We were to play at the Adelaide Showgrounds, a bus ride away in the south end of Adelaide (where most university exams are also held). 
Of course, I only managed to get one game in before spraining my ankle in April, though I understand that they didn’t play many other games anyway due to lack of participation from the other Villagers. So I took it upon myself to discuss the team with a few of my friends who I knew might be interested: Ben, Grant, and Mallory (Mike’s girlfriend).
The four of us headed down to the Showgrounds, with me eating a Vegemite-and-Cheez Whiz sandwich (it might sound disgusting, but it’s actually not bad) on the way. Our arrival gave our team 9 players, which I daresay was probably the biggest roster the Village team had had to date. But speaking of big, we immediately noticed that the other team was quite a bit larger than we were. And I mean the players’ sizes; even some of the girls were taller than I am (and probably weighed more, too).
The size difference was daunting at first, but we completely lit them up. Ben’s got some game, and did pretty much whatever he wanted; Mallory and Grant drained quite a few shots, and our other teammates poured in a bunch of points. As for myself, I managed to score just as many points as the entire other team – we won 52-16. (Not that I’m bragging or anything.)
And it now appears that before every sporting event I ever take part in again, I will be eating a Vegemite-and-Cheez Whiz sandwich.
In 2007, I traveled from my home in Maitland, Ontario to go to teacher's college in Adelaide, South Australia. Once there, I started writing a blog about my experiences, but as I started having more and more fun, my posts became fewer and farther between. By the end of my time in Oz, the blog looked nothing like what I had intended it to be, and that bothered me for the next two years.
Finally, I decided to republish From Maitland to Adelaide. All the original writing is intact, but retrospective posts will be published in chronological order, to give a fuller account of my Australian travels.
(If you like what you see, help me out and click on an ad!)
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