Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, August 25th. Topic: “Shuangya” story of a pair of Hunan masters and apprentices
Xinhua News Agency reporter Wang Jingyu
On August 19, the final whistle sounded. The players of Hunan Mingde Huaxing Middle School threw their “post-95” head coach Yu Hongjun high to celebrate the team’s victory in the 2021-2022 Chinese Junior High School Basketball League Men’s Basketball League. Group National Championship.
Looking at the scene of the opponent’s celebration, the head coach Zhou Can and assistant coach Liu Zhao of the junior high school men’s basketball team of Hunan Geology Middle School, the runner-up team, silently said to themselves, “Come back next year.”
For the men’s basketball team of Hunan Geology Junior High School who “filled up” to participate in the national divisional competition, their performance is already amazing enough, and the national runner-up result is also the best in team history. Zhou Can’s “master” Peng Zhiqiang led the Geology Middle School and High School men’s basketball team two years ago, and also stopped just one step away from the championship.
“In the provincial and city competitions, we have been under pressure from Mingde Middle School and have no chance to be on the stage of the national competition. This time, the players cherished the opportunity to participate in the regional competition. Although they lost once more in the final Given Mingde, we have done our best,” Zhou Can said.
Born in 1985, Zhou Can’s hometown is a remote mountain village under Yueyang City, Hunan Province. During the college entrance examination, he was admitted to the Hunan Institute of Humanities and Science with his sports expertise, and majored in physical education (basketball). Zhou Can told reporters that when he was a child, his family’s economic conditions were relatively poor, and it was very difficult to pay tuition fees when he went to college. Later, he completed his studies by means of work-study programs.
After graduating from university, Zhou Can taught at a private school in Dongguan, Guangdong for a year, and later returned to Changsha to become a physical education teacher at Hunan Geology Middle School. In addition to teaching students, Zhou Can also served as an assistant to Peng Zhiqiang, and became the head coach of the school’s junior high school men’s basketball team two years later.
“Guide Peng is my eldest brother and my mentor. My growth is inseparable from him.” Zhou Can said, “He is very strict with me. On the training ground, he can’t sit while he is standing, and he asks me to do training. Note, but also to check. This time he won the national runner-up and he criticized me (laughs), helping me find problems, I know he is doing this for my own good.”
Peng Zhiqiang is a well-known figure in Chinese middle school basketball. Since serving as the head coach of the high school men’s basketball team at Hunan Geology Middle School, he has spent nearly 20 years building the team into a nationally renowned powerhouse. One of his “magic weapons” is the “integrated” training method from junior high school to high school. It is worth mentioning that the competition between Geology Middle School and Mingde Middle School continued from junior high school to high school. In the high school stage, Geology Middle School has improved from enrollment to training. In recent years, the overall record in provincial and national competitions has surpassed Mingde Middle School.
Zhou Can said frankly, because the junior high school team undertakes the task of supplying talents for the geology middle school and high school men’s basketball team, and the high school team has achieved a good record in recent years, he also feels a heavy burden.
“I have always been under pressure to lead the Geology Junior High School team. The high school team’s performance is so good, and the junior high school team can’t be bad, otherwise it’s unreasonable.” Zhou Can said, “Our venue conditions are average, and the quality of enrollment is not as good as Mingde Middle School, so we can only rely on high quality. , efficient training.”
On the training ground, Zhou Can often observes whether the players are fully engaged and pays great attention to adjusting their mental state. He said: “If the training subjects can be completed with high quality, the efficiency will be high. If the players don’t do their best, the efficiency will be low. Attitude is very important, and the child’s psychological condition needs the coaches to think regarding it. If you want to practice, you can get twice the result with half the effort.”
Zhou Can usually leads the team’s training in the followingnoon following school, starting at 5 or 6 o’clock and ending at 8 or 9 o’clock in the evening. Weekends and winter and summer vacations are the golden period for team training, with two training sessions a day and little rest.
According to Zhou Can, the seedlings of the men’s basketball team in the junior high school of geology mainly come from cities around Changsha such as Yueyang, Chenzhou and Yongzhou. The training conditions for the team are tough. Because the school also has high school men’s and women’s basketball teams, there is not enough space in the gymnasium. From Monday to Friday, the junior high school men’s basketball team often has to walk for nearly half an hour in the social field for training, and the school gymnasium can only be used on weekends. In the first two years, due to the renovation of the school’s outdoor basketball court, the venue was even more tense. In those two years, regarding half of the team’s training was completed on a small concrete space next to the teaching building. A culture teacher in the school has video data of children practicing footsteps and dribbling in the building. After the team won the national runner-up this time, everyone looked back at the hard training in the past and was very emotional.
“Our conditions are limited, and the outside world is not very optimistic regarding us this time, but I always tell students that ‘the opportunity is hard-won, I hope you don’t miss it’.”
At present, the scale of participation in the China Junior High School Basketball League is smaller than that of the China High School Basketball League, so the qualifications for the national divisional competition are more scarce. The Hunan provincial team belongs to the southern region in the national divisional competition. Usually, there is only one seat in the province to advance to the divisional competition. This year, due to the epidemic and other reasons, the qualifications of the western region of the national divisional competition were vacant. The Hunan Geology Middle School team, originally located in the southern region, “filled up” the competition as the runner-up of the Hunan grass-roots competition. As a result, they won the championship in the western region with a complete victory. , advance to the finals.
In the finals of 8 national teams, the men’s basketball team of Geology Junior Middle School eliminated two strong teams, Nanjing No. 9 Middle School and Shenzhen No. 2 Experimental School, and entered the final.
“Before the final, we won a complete victory, and all the games were played once morest the opponent.” Zhou Can said proudly.
The style of the junior and senior men’s basketball teams in Geology Middle School is the same, and they are all known for their oppressive defense and fast, flexible, and changeable offense. made a deep impression. In the usual training, the team focuses on the training of footsteps, lower body strength and explosiveness, and focuses on cultivating players’ positive attitude towards the game.
“About 70% of the players in our high school team are sent by the junior high school team. Instructor Peng emphasizes the idea of overall defense and overall attack throughout our system, so as to ensure a better connection between the junior and high school teams. “
In this year’s national finals and the Mingde Huaxing Middle School team’s final, Geology Junior High School’s men’s basketball team led by 10 points at one point. At the beginning of the third quarter, there was a small climax of 5:0, but it was reversed by the opponent.
“After the game, Director Peng and I made a summary. We still mightn’t keep up with our physical fitness and intensity, and our mentality also changed following being hit by the opponent. Mingde still has advantages in height, strength, and physical fitness. In that game, rebounding We lost 25 balls. On the other hand, the other team has more players than us, and we had a rotation of 6 or 7 players in the second half. Mingde had 8 or 9 players, and their game experience should be richer.”
In this year’s China junior and senior basketball leagues, the geology middle school junior and senior high school men’s basketball teams won the championships in the western and southern regions respectively, demonstrating their strong overall strength. In the high school basketball league finals, the geology middle school high school men’s basketball team lost by 2 points in the quarter-finals to the 14-time Tsinghua Affiliated High School men’s basketball team.
“We lost to Tsinghua High School in the final in 2020. This year, we were held back by injuries. Otherwise, we would have a good chance of entering the final.” Peng Zhiqiang said, “It’s a pity, we are going to fight once more next year.”
Like his “master” Peng Zhiqiang, Zhou Can set his goal following the runner-up as winning the championship. “Basketball is something you can’t relax for a moment. If you don’t work hard, people will come up at once.”
Zhou Can discussed with Peng Zhiqiang that the junior high school men’s basketball team should continue to work hard. The first is to cooperate with the club to strengthen the training and selection of players in the primary school, so that the junior high school team has a more stable and high-quality source of students. The second is to hire professional trainers and physical fitness trainers to assist the team in training, refine the division of labor, and improve the professionalism of training. The third is to train the existing junior high school players at different levels, and focus on training and polishing players with greater development potential. In addition, the geology middle school junior and senior high school men’s basketball team also plans to work hard on diet, nutrition, work and rest, etc. to help children grow up better.
“I believe our team will get better and better. We have to take ourselves as our goal. When we are strong, we will not be afraid of others.” Zhou Can said.
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责编：刘希尧 ]