Reprinted with permission, originally published: FalconsBasketballClub
On the afternoon of the 28th, we met Xu Yong in a café in Tsinghua Science Park, wearing a pair of light-colored narrow-rimmed glasses and the "Tsinghua University... Football Team" reveals his inextricable connection to the top university. In 1991, he was sent to the Department of Computer Science of Tsinghua University with the 4th place in the mathematics competition in Liaoning Province, and since then he has remembered two sentences, "No sports, no Tsinghua" and "Fifty years of work for the health of the motherland". However, on that day, his identity was not an outstanding alumnus of Tsinghua University and a successful scientific and technological worker, but a Haidian ball father.
Xu Yong's 18-year-old son, Xu Yide (English name Cooper), is now a freshman at Hamilton College, the top liberal arts college in the United States, and not long ago, he successfully impressed the head coach of the men's basketball team, Adam Stockwell, becoming the only yellow person in the 15-man list. Although Hamilton College is only an NCAA triple league team, this is a remarkable achievement for Xu Yide, who is not from a sports family and has a mediocre height and ability to run and jump. The purpose of our appointment with Xu Yong is to ask him to share some successful experiences in physical education.
Xu Yide's Beijing West International School has a large number of extracurricular activities for students to choose from, covering most mainstream sports, even the less popular fencing, and his basketball education began here. This is actually the reason why his case is not very reproducible – there are too few Chinese children who have such full choice in sports. But his upbringing, how his parents coped with the educational anxiety under the inner volume, and how to prevent their children from choosing between basketball and schoolwork, all have very good reference significance.
In the 8th grade, Xu Yide trained in basketball outside the school, from Sports Beijing, which was spontaneously organized by parents, to Tu Hui's Falcon Club (hereinafter referred to as "Falcon"), Tu Hui is a native of Wuhan, who played in the University League and semi-professional league in the United Kingdom as a student, and was also the basketball coach of Jingxi International School at that time.
The biggest difference between Falcon and Sports Beijing, Hsu said, is that the latter "has a game every weekend, and every week you can show what you are practicing." Tu Hui often invites some of Beijing's traditional strong teams to participate in their own BIYB leagues, Miyun No. 2 Middle School, Yangzhen Middle School... Even the Shougang Third Team sometimes comes over. In the eyes of father and son, the increase in the number of games is the most important reason for his rapid progress. "Kids grow up in competitions, not in training." Xu Yong thinks.
When he first arrived at the Falcons, Xu Yide was only at the second team level, and when he was upset because he couldn't play the main force, Xu Yong comforted him: "It's good to be able to play, whether the coach uses you or not, you can eventually learn something, and you have to treat it with a positive attitude." Xu Yong has always been Buddhist, because he knows that the sports cells he inherited to his son are limited, "I am a person who can't even enter the football team", so from the first day of Xu Yide's practice, he did not set any goals for him, and later his son was able to enter the NCAA, which was a complete bonus.
"He had a couple of bottlenecks, but he was able to break my imagination every time, for example, I thought it would be nice if he could barely touch the basket when he jumped up, but he could catch the basket later." Xu Yong said.
Before joining the team, like thousands of children of the same age, Xu Yide liked to play games and eat snacks, which made him feel happy. After joining the team, he found that getting stronger was something that made him feel happier, "I don't want to make progress faster than me because I don't work hard." Xu Yong did not deliberately compress the time of his son playing games, but Xu Yide, driven by a strong desire for self-realization, automatically put a lot of time playing games on basketball. Not only that, but at the suggestion of Tu Hui and other coaches, he also gave up snacks and sweets, and basically drank only white water and milk.
Gradually, Xu Yide was promoted from the second team to the first team, from the marginal people to the main force, and in the 11th grade (equivalent to the domestic high school sophomore), he became the captain of the varsity team. Shouting and communicating on the field, Tu Hui asked him to do this, and he remembered Tu Hui telling him: "Whether you are a leader or not, you must regard yourself as a leader, and you must speak on the field." "Think of yourself as a leader, and slowly, Xu Yide really became a leader."
The summer vacation of the 11th grade to the 12th grade is the period of Xu Yide's fastest progress. At that time, there was a former student of Tu Hui who returned to Falcon as a work-study assistant coach - a tradition of Falcon, and Xu Yide said that he would also return to be an assistant coach in the future. This student of Beijing Sport University has established a very good friendship with Xu Yide, who not only practices in the club, but also meets everywhere in Haidian District to play wild and pick up. "When grade 12 started, I already felt different from start to finish." Xu Yide said.
In his final year of high school, Xu Yide averaged 20 points per game in the BIYB League, won all the regular season games, and lost only one game in the playoffs. At this time, he already has the strength to challenge the NCAA's third division.
Like many basketball teenagers, Xu Yide also had times when his grades fluctuated, but Xu Yong never let him choose between basketball and his studies, nor did he use this as a chip to force him to do his studies. "There was a time when I had problems studying, and my dad would teach me to arrange my time properly." Xu Yide said, "My father also told me that when you go to college, don't study hard, you must try to play basketball, you can't go in your freshman year, and you will try again next year." ”
"You think playing basketball is a delay, but it's just a delay in his playing time." Xu Yong said that his second son is now studying in the International Department of Peking University Affiliated High School, and he has to practice seven times a week, and it is often eight or nine o'clock after writing his homework, "As a result, he still has time to play games." As mentioned earlier, Xu Yide later spent the time playing games on basketball to complete the overtaking of his peers.
Xu Yong is committed to creating a relaxed growth environment for his son, but what Xu Yide does not know is that his father actually has great anxiety, after all, the couple are both Tsinghua graduates in the 90s, his wife is still teaching at Tsinghua University, and there is no shortage of friends and colleagues around him. And don't forget, that is Haidian, the "hardest hit area" of education! There is a passage that says that the child is 4 years old and has an English vocabulary of only about 1500, is it not enough? A: It is certainly enough in the United States, and it is certainly not enough in Haidian.
However, Xu Yong never let his two sons attend any extracurricular tutoring classes or interest classes, "Normal is to do subtraction, and it is enough to have a hobby." He thinks.
We asked him if his Buddhist family was related to Xu Yide's study in an international school with relatively little academic pressure. He told us such a story, Xu Yide has an alumnus, the grade is 37, 8 points (out of 42 points), the main force of the school choir, the top ten in Beijing in a certain sport, he set up an interest club, and also followed a university professor to do papers, and his family hired a retired American university admissions teacher as a counselor.
The chicken baby will never be capped, compared with this alumnus, Xu Yide really lived too easily. "We have analyzed this matter, and after analyzing it, we feel that people are not worth this in this life, this is packaged, not on behalf of themselves." Xu Yong said that the second son's grades were ordinary, and when he chose a school in high school, they did not dare to consider the "Haidian Six Little Strong", but rational judgment still overshadowed the impulse to be driven by the surrounding pressure to drive the chicken baby.
But Xu Yong can pat his chest proudly and say that among the parents of the children who play with Xu Yide, he spends the most time with his son. He is not busy at work, he does not socialize much, every weekend competition, training, and even training all over the country, the south of the world, he will basically follow, find a humble corner, silently pay attention to his son. He feels that while he is with his children, he is also learning and growing, and the dazzling cooperation of basketball, like those codes and parts, makes him feel interesting. Xu Yide remembers that sometimes he went downstairs late at night to practice in the open space, and his father would accompany him downstairs, running around the community in a circle, and every once in a while he could "meet" him.
In the last two years of high school, Xu Yide consciously reduced the time to play WeChat and games, and his grades improved slightly, and it was not enough to apply for the best school, but it was not a big problem to apply for a school like Hamilton College of Arts and Sciences. When choosing a school, the father and son invariably included the "NCAA Triple League" into the prerequisites, and finally the long-established liberal arts college founded by the founding father of the United States, Hamilton. "Find a way to mix in the school team, if you can't mix it in, you must also be mentally prepared." Xu Yong specifically instructed his son.
The day after arriving at the school, Xu Yide sent an email to head coach Adam, who finally gave him a chance to try out for a week, passed and stayed, and left after passing. Xu Yide is the shortest on the team, he feels that he is "quite weak", because it is a team that can even 2 meters 13 big center from outside the three-point line to dribble the ball in, dribble the ball to shoot, he is proud of the overall situation, organizational ability, in front of the other point guards in front of the team is simply a brother.
In the end, he stayed, and Adam gave two reasons, one was that Xu Yide was highly motivated to defend, and the other was that he "talked so much", which was a good habit he had developed since his high school days. But Adam also put the ugly words ahead: "Won't give you any playing time unless we lead by 30 points." You'll continue your trial next year, and if you don't qualify, you'll still retire. "Staying in the team only means being safe for the time being, never wanting to stay in your comfort zone, and if you want to stay, you can speak with strength."
One sentence made him very unpleasant, and for a whole day, he was thinking, "Is it meaningful to spend so much time trying?" Later, he thought of another yellow guard who had a very bad early career, Jeremy Lin, "A year ago, I wouldn't have thought of entering the college basketball team, I thought it might be a year, or even two years, three years", he was a little angry, "What I want now is to prove it to everyone and believe in the process." ”
We wish this averagely gifted child a chance to play in the NCAA soon!