The Battle of Moscow

In the years from 1994-1996 we took Girls basketball teams from Eastern Iowa to Russia. The team we took in 1994 was the first women’s’ basketball team to go in from the U.S. after the Soviet Union fell. Some of the players that went the first year included Emily Bailey and Lori Hopkins from Gladbrook-Reinbeck, and Heather Bickert and Heather Bierschmit from Jesup. Coaches included Virgil Hovden and Nick Donlea, what a super trip that was. What an honor it is to represent your country in basketball internationally.

All three years we were sponsored by the Trinta Basketball School in Moscow. They were part of the engine of the old Soviet sports makeup. In the Soviet days what they would do for sports like basketball, is go to primary schools looking for the best athletes for certain sports and put them into schools that specialized in that sport. Trinta was one of those schools.

Trinta was a boarding school so they had dorms and a kitchen to put us up in. It was located in the heart of Moscow. It had an asylum on one side, a crematorium on one side, and a refrigerator plant on one side. They cremated bodies during the night on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That smell will stay with me the rest of my life. There was a pond on the grounds of the asylum where people would go swimming, some of the sights we saw there were quite unique as well.

The superintendent at the school was a woman and one of the coaches at the school. Her husband cooked for us when we stayed at the Trinta School. He had also cooked for Fidel Castro in Cuba at one point of his life. The car he drove was given to him by Castro. Part of our breakfast every morning included porridge. Although the Russians went out of the way to see that we ate well, we always tried to work in a lunch at McDonald’s and a supper at Pizza Hut. There Pizza Hut supreme pizza included corn on it.

We always went in August of each year so that anyone who played high school softball in the summer here in Iowa could go. Sometimes because of that they struggled to get us games because players and their families would leave Moscow for vacation in August. Now that I think about it that is similar to here.

One day  the second year we went the Superintendant came to me and said the team we were supposed to play could not get enough players together, she asked if it was alright if they put together a group of players to play us. I said sure we just wanted games. She scheduled us to play that day at one.

As our athletes were warming up, players started to arrive. One lady that walked in had a three year old by the hand. Another lady that walked in had a five year old and a baby in a stroller. Both of the ladies laced up shoes and started to warm-up, they had about five other high school age girls on their team.

What proceeded to occur was the largest beating, any team I ever coach took. The final score was 119-19, the mother that came in with the two children had 53 points and 27 rebounds, the other mother only had 28 points. They were open to shoot when they crossed the half-court line, absolutely amazing. That night at supper, the superintendant told me that they both had played on the Soviet Olympic team.

At least Napoleon had the excuse that he had got his army caught in Moscow in the winter.