{"id":18806,"date":"2024-04-25T12:51:34","date_gmt":"2024-04-25T17:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/?p=18806"},"modified":"2024-04-25T13:04:04","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T18:04:04","slug":"st-theresa-girls-basketball-theres-no-i-in-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/2024\/04\/25\/st-theresa-girls-basketball-theres-no-i-in-team\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Theresa girls\u2019 basketball: there\u2019s no \u2018i\u2019 in \u2018team\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"18806\" class=\"elementor elementor-18806\" data-elementor-post-type=\"post\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"has_eae_slider elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-6dca1ff elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default wpr-particle-no wpr-jarallax-no wpr-parallax-no wpr-sticky-section-no\" data-id=\"6dca1ff\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"has_eae_slider elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-7c9ef61\" data-id=\"7c9ef61\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-e260ae9 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"e260ae9\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<style>\/*! elementor - v3.22.0 - 26-06-2024 *\/\n.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-stacked .elementor-drop-cap{background-color:#69727d;color:#fff}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-framed .elementor-drop-cap{color:#69727d;border:3px solid;background-color:transparent}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap{margin-top:8px}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap-letter{width:1em;height:1em}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap{float:left;text-align:center;line-height:1;font-size:50px}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap-letter{display:inline-block}<\/style>\t\t\t\t<p>Juan Valenzuela loves basketball. He\u2019s played it since he was a kid and continues to participate in adult leagues. He\u2019s an avid Los Angeles Lakers fan, the kind that wears his purple and gold loyalties, literally, on his sleeve.<br>On top of all that, he\u2019s a first-year volunteer coach at St. Theresa School in southwest Little Rock, in charge of the fifth-grade girls\u2019 squad, of which his daughter Stephanie is a member.<\/p><p>\u201cI wanted to become a coach and teach the game I love and give back to the younger generation,\u201d he said.&nbsp;<\/p><p>So began an odyssey that has held no shortage of challenges for the 33-year-old Valenzuela, his two assistant coaches and his cohort of young athletes. For one thing, there weren\u2019t enough fifth graders to make a team, so four fourth graders were recruited.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cFirst couple of practices with all the girls there, it was a difficult challenge,\u201d Valenzuela said. \u201cI\u2019d played for so many years and coaching different skill levels, it was an adjustment teaching these girls who are beginning with the basics. I had to find out who could dribble, who knows about the game.<\/p><p>\u201cThe first practice, I asked them a question, \u2018Who knows what a double dribble is? Point guard? Shooting guard? Who knows the positions in basketball?\u2019 None of them knew anything.\u201d<\/p><p>The team was augmented by the addition of Cate Garrett, a fifth grader from Our Lady of Fatima School willing to make the drive from Benton in order to have a team to play for.&nbsp;<\/p><p>\u201cCate speaks English very well. Mary Belle speaks English very well. My daughter Stephanie speaks English very well,\u201d Valenzuela said. \u201cBut my other girls, Emily, Julianna, they\u2019re from Mexico. And my other one, Bella, is from Guatemala, and they speak Spanish very well. I had to coach in English, stop and translate in Spanish so everybody could understand.\u201d<\/p><p>The girls who started out as strangers became teammates in the essential sense of the word, helping each other to not only learn the game, but truly learn something about each other as people.<\/p><p>\u201cI didn\u2019t really know (the other girls) until basketball,\u201d point guard Stephanie Valenzuela said. \u201cI started talking to them at school, and I met Cate at her birthday party and at the gym. Now I\u2019m starting to get to be good friends with them. We play outside. I\u2019m friends with the whole team.\u201d<\/p><p>Garrett, who also plays point guard, said she wasn\u2019t intimidated by the prospect of meeting all new teammates or forging relationships. She said the process has been as rewarding as the sport itself.<\/p><p>\u201cI\u2019ve been teaching some of the girls that only speak Spanish some English, and they\u2019ve been teaching me Spanish. So we kind of translate back and forth,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty cool to learn Spanish, a language that I don\u2019t know. They\u2019ve taught me a lot, and I\u2019ve taught them a lot too.\u201d<\/p><p>\u201cIt has been wonderful watching them and seeing how they\u2019re learning and picking up the skills and how they\u2019re picking up the language to talk to each other,\u201d Coach Valenzuela said. \u201cIn the beginning, they didn\u2019t know how to talk to each other, they didn\u2019t know how to communicate, and now they\u2019re goofing around and becoming friends.<\/p><p>\u201cIf I\u2019m over here explaining to Cate and Mary Belle in English, I\u2019ve got my co-captain, Julianna, in the background translating into Spanish so they can communicate on the floor. They help each other understand, and it\u2019s pretty wonderful watching them grow from where they started and where they are now.\u201d<\/p><p>With everything the team had to deal with just to field a team, Valenzuela admitted he had to learn to temper his competitive streak and expectations for success on the court. Yet after four games, the Panthers have already notched a victory and watching them practice yields just how much fondness they\u2019ve already developed for each other. Talking to some of the players, it\u2019s clear the team is learning something far more important than the game itself.<\/p><p>\u201cI love meeting new people,\u201d Stephanie Valenzuela said. \u201cWe talk and get along and I respect that and we\u2019ve become friends.\u201d<\/p><p>\u201cWe just have to work together and state what we believe in,\u201d Garrett said. \u201cWe have to work together like Jesus would have worked with his apostles.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Juan Valenzuela loves basketball. He\u2019s played it since he was a kid and continues to participate in adult leagues. He\u2019s an avid Los Angeles Lakers fan, the kind that wears his purple and gold loyalties, literally, on his sleeve.On top of all that, he\u2019s a first-year volunteer coach at St. Theresa School in southwest Little Rock, in charge of the fifth-grade girls\u2019 squad, of which his daughter Stephanie is a member. \u201cI wanted to become a coach and teach the game I love and give back to the younger generation,\u201d he said.&nbsp; So began an odyssey that has held no<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2184],"tags":[2461,141,284,287,2460],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2024-07-11 09:30:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18806"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18811,"href":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18806\/revisions\/18811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansas-catholic.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}