Haidian Buddha system ball father: not chicken child not inside the volume, but sent his son to the NCAA

Authorized to reprint, originally published: FalconsBasketballClub

On the afternoon of the 28th, we met Xu Yong at a cafe in the Tsinghua Science and Technology Park, he wore a pair of light-colored, narrow-framed glasses, the right chest of his jacket, "Tsinghua University" words reveal his ties to this top university. ...... soccer team" on the right chest of his jacket, revealing his inextricable link with this top university. In 1991, he was guaranteed admission to the Computer Science Department of Tsinghua University with the 4th place in Liaoning Province in the Mathematics Competition, and from then on, he has remembered the two phrases, "No sports, no Tsinghua! He has since memorized two phrases, "no sports, no Tsinghua" and "fifty years of healthy work for the motherland". However, his identity that day was not an alumnus of Tsinghua University, successful technology workers, but a Haidian ball father.

Xu Yong's 18-year-old son Xu Yide (English name Cooper), now a freshman at Hamilton College, one of the top liberal arts colleges in the U.S. Not long ago, he managed to impress school men's basketball head coach Adam Stockwell, becoming the only yellow on the 15-man roster. Although Hamilton College is only an NCAA Division III team, this is a remarkable achievement for Xu, who doesn't come from a family of athletes and has mediocre height and jumping ability. We asked Xu Yong to share some of his successes in physical education.

Xu's school, Beijing West International School, has a wide range of extracurricular activities for students to choose from, covering most of the mainstream sports, including even fencing, a relatively unknown sport, where he got his start in basketball. That's why his case is not very replicable - too few Chinese kids have such a full range of choices in sports. But there are good lessons to be learned from his upbringing, and from how his parents dealt with the anxiety of education under the involution, and how they managed to keep their kids from having to choose between basketball and school.

In 8th grade, Xu Yide's off-campus basketball training switched from Sports Beijing, which was self-organized by his parents, to the Falcons Club (hereafter referred to as the Falcons) of Tu Hui, a native of Wuhan, who played collegiate and semi-professional basketball in the UK during his time as a student, and who was the basketball coach for the West Beijing International School (WBIS). The Falcons are the most popular basketball team in the world, and they are the best in the world.

The biggest difference between the Falcons and Sports Beijing, Xu Yide said, is that the latter "has games every weekend, and you can show what you've practiced every week. Tu Hui often invites some of Beijing's traditional powerhouse teams to come to their own BIYB league, and Miyun No. 2 Middle School, Yangzhen Middle School ...... and even Shougang's third team sometimes come over. In the opinion of father and son, the increased amount of matches is the most important reason for his rapid progress. "Children grow up in the competition, not in training." Xu Yong believes.

When he first arrived at the Falcons, Xu Yide was only at the level of the second team, and when he was distressed because he couldn't play as a starter, Xu Yong reassured him, "It's good to be able to play, and no matter whether the coaches use you or not, you're going to be able to learn something, so you have to treat it with a positive mindset." Xu Yong has always been Buddhist, because he knows that he inherited his son's sports cells are limited, "I'm a person who can't even get into the department's soccer team," so from the first day of Xu Yide's practice, he did not set any goals for him, and then his son was able to play in the NCAA, which was a complete surprise.

"He suffered a few bottlenecks, but he broke through my imagination every time, for example, I thought it would be good for him to jump up and barely touch the basket, but then he jumped up and grabbed the basket." Xu Yong said.

Before joining the team, like millions of kids his age, Xu Yide liked to play games and eat snacks, things that made him happy. After joining the team, he realized that getting stronger is something that makes him feel happier, "I don't want to make more progress than me because I don't work hard." Xu Yong didn't intentionally compress his son's gaming time, but Xu Yide, driven by a strong desire for self-fulfillment, automatically put a lot of his gaming time into basketball. Not only that, he also gave up snacks and sweets and basically only drank plain water and milk under the advice of Tu Hui and other coaches.

Gradually, Xu Yide was promoted from the second team to the first team, from the fringe to become the main force, 11th grade (equivalent to the domestic sophomore), he became the captain of the varsity team. Shouting and communicating on the field, Tu Hui asked him to do so, and he remembers Tu Hui telling him, "Whether you are a leader or not, you must treat yourself as a leader, and you must talk on the field." Put yourself as a leader, slowly, Xu Yide really become a leader.

The summer vacation of 11th grade to 12th grade was one of the fastest periods of progress for Xu Yide. At that time, a former student of Tu Hui went back to the Falcons as a work-study assistant coach - a tradition of the Falcons - and Xu Yide said he would go back to be an assistant coach in the future. This Beijing Sports University students, and Xu Yide established a very good friendship, they not only in the club to practice, usually will meet in the Haidian District around the field, pick up the dial. "At the beginning of 12th grade, I already felt different from the beginning to the end." Xu Yide said.

In his last year of high school, Xu Yide averaged 20 points per game in the BIYB league, winning all of his regular season games and losing just one in the playoffs. At this point, he already has the strength to challenge the NCAA Division III.

Like many basketball teenagers, Xu Yide had fluctuating grades, but Xu Yong never let him choose between basketball and academics, nor did he use it as a bargaining chip to force him to get his academics up. "There was a time when I had problems studying, and my dad would teach me to organize my time wisely." Xu Yide said, "My dad also told me that when I got to college don't study hard, you must try to play basketball, you can't go freshman year, try again next year."

"You think playing basketball is a delay, in fact, just delayed his time to play games." Xu Yong said, his second son is now studying in the international department of the Peking University attached to the middle school, seven times a week to practice the ball, write homework is often eight or nine o'clock, "the result is that he still has time to play games." As mentioned earlier, Xu Yide's time spent playing games was used for basketball, which enabled him to overtake his peers.

Xu Yong is committed to creating a relaxed environment for his son to grow up in, but what Xu Yide doesn't know is that his father actually has a huge amount of anxiety - after all, the couple are both Tsinghua graduates from the 1990s, and his wife teaches at Tsinghua University, so there's no shortage of friends and colleagues who have really good sons. And don't forget, that's the "hardest hit" area of education, Haidian! There's a story about a 4 year old child who only has about 1500 words of English vocabulary, isn't that too much? A: In the U.S. it's certainly enough, but in Haidian it's certainly not enough.

But Xu Yong since the beginning of the two sons did not let any extracurricular tutorial classes, interest classes, "normal is to do subtraction, there is a hobby is enough." He believes.

We asked him if the fact that he was so Buddhist had anything to do with the fact that Xu Yide attended an international school with relatively little academic pressure. He told us a story that Xu Yide has an alumnus with a score of 37 or 8 (out of 42), the main school choir, one of the sports sports top ten in Beijing, set up his own hobby clubs, and followed a university professor to do his thesis, and his family hired a retired American university admissions teacher as a consultant.

Chicken child never capped, compared with this alumnus, Xu Yide indeed live too easy. "We have analyzed this thing, after analyzing, think people in this life is not worth it, this is packaged, does not represent themselves." Xu Yong said, the second son's performance is ordinary, high school choice, they did not dare to consider "Haidian six small strong", but rational judgment, or covered by the surrounding pressure driven by the impulse of the chicken child.

The last two years of high school, Xu Yide consciously reduce the time to play WeChat, playing games, grades rose slightly, applying for the best school is not enough, but applying for a Hamilton College of Arts and Sciences, such as schools, has been little problem. When choosing a school, father and son coincidentally "NCAA Division III" into the necessary conditions, and eventually by the founding father of the United States Hamilton founded a long history of liberal arts and sciences colleges. "Find a way to get on the varsity team, but if you don't, you have to be mentally prepared." Xu Yong specifically instructed his son.

The day after he arrived at the school, Xu Yide sent an email to head coach Adam, who eventually gave him a chance to try out for a week, and if he passed, he stayed, and if he didn't, he left. Xu Yide is the team's shortest, he felt that he was "quite weak", because it was a team that even 2 meters 13 centers can be outside the three-point line dribbling the ball in, dribbling the ball to shoot the team, he was proud of the big picture, organization, in front of the team's other point guards is simply a younger brother.

In the end, he stayed, Adam gave two reasons, one is Xu Yide high defensive aggressiveness, and the second is that he "talk so much", which is a good habit he developed from high school. But Adam also put the ugly words in front: "will not give you any playing time, unless we are up by 30 points. You'll continue to try out next year, and if you don't pass, you'll still be off the team." Staying on the team only means temporary safety, never want to stay in the comfort zone, want to stay, use strength to speak.

One comment put him in a bad light, and for a whole day he wondered, "Does it make sense to spend so much time trying?" Then he thought of another yellow guard who had an extremely rough early career -- Jeremy Lin, "A year ago, I wouldn't have thought about making a college basketball team, I thought it could have been one year, maybe even two, three," he said, a little angry. "All I want to do now is prove it to everybody and trust the process."

We wish this kid with average talent the best of luck and hope he hits the ground running in the NCAA soon!