Never enough

Mike could never play enough basketball. I think he craves it in the same way that his lungs crave air or in the same way that fish NEED water. :) Being at TLO and having open gyms several Saturday mornings per month was great for Mike... but being here in Thailand with so many athletic male teachers who want nothing more than to play as often as their aging bodies can handle, is like heaven for him.

They play every Saturday morning from 9-12. Sunday afternoons were once reserved for soccer, but it has now morphed into basketball playing. This weekend was the big kahuna or something because they had basketball on Thursday after school, on Friday (which was PD day so there was no school), Saturday morning and probably tomorrow as well. :)

These pictures are actually taken from a student vs. faculty game sometime back in February. To make it a little bit more fair and challenging for the teachers since they would otherwise dominate the students (these kids are soccer players, not basketball players), they decided to change the point value system. The kids still got their regular points (3 for a 3-pointer, 2 for other shots and 1 for free-throws), but the teachers had to work a bit harder to win since 3-pointers were worth 2 points and every other shot was worth 1.

Despite the change in scoring value, the teachers still won 52-46, though it did make it an intense and awfully close game. I think everyone had a lot of fun playing... though I wouldn't doubt that the teachers had more fun since having a student vs. teacher faculty game is really just another excuse for them to play more ball... since they just can't seem to get enough of it. :)