This appears in the Monday, September 17, 2012 edition of the Business Mirror.
Bleachers' Brew #238
3,000 miles from Philadelphia
Bleachers' Brew #238
3,000 miles from Philadelphia
by rick olivares
The kid from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
woke up on Christmas Day, took some greetings from his friends and teammates
and freaked out, “This ain’t no Christmas! Christmas got snow!”
Meet Far Eastern University’s Anthony
Hargrove Jr. The simple rule about the Tamaraws’ man in the middle? Never
pigeon hole him into a certain something.
Now that sounds confusing so let me
expound.
You think this Philly kid grew up
rooting for the hometown 76ers? Nope. He was a Los Angeles Lakers fan. “I’m a
huge Magic Johnson fan,” he laughs. Yes, for real!”
Many a folk from the East Coast dislike
the snow and the cold weather. Hargrove? “I love it! Can’t have a White Christmas
if you don’t have snow.” But the young man’s journey ironically finds him in
hot and humid Philippines.
“I heard a lot about the passion that
Filipinos have for basketball and I wanted to see how I’d do here. It’s
physical and it seems that way here in Asia. But there are some who play dirty.
Greg (Slaughter) and I must be the players who get hit the most and the league
(UAAP) should really look into this. But the UAAP is everything and more than
what I expected.”
Hargrove has been in the Philippines
for three years now and although he misses the snow every once in a while, he
loves it here. His basketball dream is actually to play in the Philippine
Basketball Association or the Asean Basketball League as an import. “That’s my
dream. It isn’t going to be easy but if I just work hard who knows what can
happen?”
But first, Anthony has to figure out
the vernacular.
He loves his FEU teammates but
conversing is a pain. “RR (Garcia) and Terrence (Romeo) don’t speak English,”
laughed Hargrove who is the dorm roommate of the latter. “They try to teach me
words and I try to get them to speak English. But since they don’t really speak
it regularly, man, it’s tough.”
“When my dad (Anthony senior) visited recently,
he asked why English suddenly sounded funny. I said, ‘Ah, I don’t really get to
speak English that much here.’”
Come tip off, Hargrove has to figure
things out in a jiffy. “When Coach Bert (Flores) calls for a play, he starts
off by saying, ‘Anthony, you do this and you do that.’ Then he lapses back in
Filipino so now I’m lost. Terrence or RR try their best to explain things to me
but I sometimes get lost and coach gets back at me and says, ‘Anthony, you are
not following the play.’ I say, ‘Coach, I didn’t understand what you were
saying.’ But I’m getting there.”
On the other hand, it isn’t that easy.
Hargrove has to master another position. Back in the United States, Anthony
would play the three-spot. With FEU, by virtue of being the second tallest
player on the squad (after the 6’10” Christian Sentcheu), the 6’6” American has
to play center. It is a different skill set but he has embraced it. There’s a
passion to learn for Hargrove not just on the hardcourt but also in the
classroom.
“Sometimes, I sit back and think that
this is one strange journey,” reflected Hargrove. “It seems like the situations
are opposite.”
He paused. Unsure if I understood what
he was saying. But I affirmed what he was trying to tell me.
“I like to look at the whole situation
with a little humor. But I know that I am here for a reason and I’m going to
make the most out of it.”
If I had to pick two guys to respect from the FEU team it's got to be Hargrove and RR. Everyone else comes off as just too unnecessarily physical.
ReplyDelete“Sometimes, I sit back and think that this is one strange journey,” reflected Hargrove. “It seems like the situations are opposite.”
ReplyDeleteLoaded yon ha.