Nothing to Lose, Everything to Prove
By: Hannah Gillihan
Tags: Coming Of Age, Israel, Personal Narrative, Palestine, Basketball

By Hannah Gillihan

With Less than thirty seconds on the clock, we were tied 42–42 with Anglican International School, but it was their ball. Our team was exhausted, just barely pushing out a jog as we spread across the court. The clock was ticking down.

Fifteen…Fourteen…Thirteen.

Anglican International took a quick shot, hoping for a winning basket. They missed. “Go! Go! Go!” yelled my coaches. With the energy from what felt like my fourth “second-wind,” I jumped up as high as I could, arms swinging, hands grasping for the basketball. I glanced up at the clock.

Ten…Nine…Eight.

My teammates sprinted as fast as they could down the court as soon as they saw the ball in my hands, ready for me to throw them the ball. I called out to our point guard, Razan, and with one sweeping motion the ball had gone from my hands, to the half-court line, to the free throw line.

Five…Four…Three…Two…

Razan shot up as fast as she could for a layup with two seconds left on the clock. Time felt like it came to a brief halt in those last few seconds. Everyone’s hands were in the air, mouths were wide open, people were jumping — and I could feel my pulse through my chest as I watched the ball shoot up to the center of the backboard.

One.

The scoreboard changed. 44–42. My exhaustion immediately turned into celebration as my teammates all ran to each other screaming. “The Jerusalem High School Yellow Jackets have officially won their first ever Israeli National Championship,” said the announcer over the speakers. Tears filled my eyes, probably because of the adrenaline, as my teammates and I huddled together for a picture with our medals and trophy. Nothing in my life so far had felt as good as that last win.

Sure, this was just a high school basketball game — but it didn’t feel like just any basketball game.

Just over a year and a half earlier, during the spring of 2011, my parents came into my room and delivered the news that we would be moving from Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, to a tiny neighborhood in Jerusalem, Israel — basically the other side of the planet. I started panicking at the thought of just moving to a different country without warning and leaving behind all of my friends. Just a few weeks later, in May, we hopped aboard our flights with our entire lives stuffed into two suit cases each, trying to prepare ourselves for the next four years.

My first day at my new school, Jerusalem High School, was a few months later in early August. By that point, I had become accustomed to the language barrier and knew the city pretty well — but I didn’t know anyone my age and I was terrified at the thought of making new friends at school. It is always difficult being the new kid, but being the new kid at a Palestinian High School in Jerusalem, as a blonde haired, English speaking, American girl was petrifying. I felt like I didn’t have anything in common with any of my soon-to-be-classmates, so there was no way I was going to make any friends.

But I did have something in common with them — a love for sports.

I made one friend, Ilin Jabara, almost immediately, and she and I quickly became inseparable. We were in the same 6thgrade class, so we spent all day, every day together. Before school, during lunch, and after school, she and I could usually be found on the soccer field, kicking the ball around with the boys in our grade. We weren’t good at soccer at all, but we were some angsty 12-year-olds with heart and something to prove, so we showed up and played anyway.

However, there was one sport we were pretty good at — basketball.

Ilin and I kept to ourselves for the most part, outside of playing soccer and throwing the basketball around with everyone at school, until the end of our 6th grade year. We were told that our school would be getting a new gym over the summer, so that the following August, we could have our P.E. classes somewhere other than the blacktop, and the basketball team could have a real place to practice. To me and Ilin, that gym meant that we would finally have a real basketball court to finally play on too.

August of 2012 finally rolls around, and she and I were in 7th grade. At JHS, “high school” technically started that year, and we were intermingled with everyone from 7th graders to seniors. We were excited because in 7th grade, we were also allowed to start playing on sports teams, and the new gym had just been finished. Bright red bleacher seats lined the back of the gym, a freshly painted basketball court glistened under the fluorescent lights above, and a huge yellow jacket mural on the back wall filled the room with some school spirit. “This is literally the perfect place for us to play, no more running around outside in the heat with the boys,” Ilin said that with that first glimpse of the gym.

Until we found out a few weeks later from our P.E. teacher that there was not a women’s basketball team we could play on, and never had been.

Shocked by his response, we decided to take it upon ourselves to try to convince enough of the girls in our grade and the grades above us to be on the team. Every day, Ilin and I would bombard our female acquaintances with a convincing reason that they should agree to be on the team.

“You won’t even have to play in games if you don’t want to, you just have to sit on the bench and cheer us on!” “We just need enough girls to qualify.” “The boys might think you’re really cool for being on the team!” Whatever it took to get the girls to say yes. Eventually, we had 13 girls, enough to qualify for the upcoming conferences — now we just had to teach them how to play.

As soon we had enough girls committed to practicing and going to games, I asked my mom and another teacher at school, Jonathan Borden, if they would be our coaches. They agreed with almost no hesitation. Ilin and I were ecstatic, because this meant that we were finally able to play on a real basketball team.

I hardly knew the girls that showed up to that first practice in the new gym and still didn’t really have any other friends besides Ilin, so I was really nervous to see the dynamics of the team. But all of these girls had even the slightest inkling of wanting to play, so I hoped that it would turn out alright.

Our practices were grueling — I realize now, that the things we said to convince those girls to play were mostly lies, because they did not just sit idle on the bench just so we could qualify. We practiced for two hours every day after school for months in preparation, because we had a lot of catching up to do. We were going to be playing against girls anywhere from 12 to 18, who had probably been playing for quite a while.

“I remember we did basic dribbling and passing drills for weeks until all of us were comfortable enough to start shooting and going up and down the court. We learned the rules, the plays, the positions — pretty much everything, from the ground up,” said Ilin.

Former teammate Sama Issa said, “I guess it made us so much more of a better team though, being together like that every day, because we were just focused on having fun. We never fought over dumb mistakes, we weren’t angry when we did something wrong — we all just showed up to have fun. If we won, great! If not, who cares! We didn’t really have anything to lose.”

And come our first game, we secured our first win. And then our next win…and another…and another…until the Israeli National Championship game.

“For the first time ever, our girls team came home as the 2012 Israeli National Champions! Our team was young, but their devotion and heart are what made this a successful year. With hard work and continued dedication, there will be no stopping these ladies. GO LADY JACKETS!” said coach Jonathan Borden, in JHS’s 2012–2013 yearbook.

“I don’t think we ever expected you guys to win, or even be very good when it came to a real game,” said Heather Gillihan, my mother and assistant coach to the team. “I don’t even think you guys expected it. We were just expecting you guys to learn how to play the game and create bonds with each other that season. But you guys showed up every day, went through highs and lows together, and really became a loving little family.”

She’s right. We weren’t expecting to be good, it just kind of happened. We all just upheld our commitment to each other to show up and practice, and the bonds started forming. As soon as we started to trust each other, we improved drastically, and our relationships with each other ended up going so far beyond the sport.

“All of us, on the bench or not, were hopped up on that adrenaline rush, and it would just keep us pushing during the games. We would just gas each other up from the sidelines and on the court, yelling inside jokes and ridiculous statements to keep the energy up. You could be angry and crying one moment, and laughing like an idiot the next — we never let the spirits get too low, because we all cared more about each other than the game I think,” said Ilin.

Former teammate and point guard Razan Sbeih recalled her buzzer winning shot in that final game, saying that the win “wasn’t because of the skill or even the hard work. It was mostly because of the love and support we all had for each other as teammates. There really wasn’t an “I” in team at all, because we all lifted each other up every single step of the way and had each other’s backs throughout our whole journey.”

One.

That last second buzzer-beater shot of our final game was a culmination of months of hard work, dedication and pure love, from 13 young girls who just wanted play basketball. We were underdogs, and by some miracle, found ourselves National Champions in our first-ever season. We made history together and left behind a legacy that everyone at school talked about for years after, and that no one could compete with.

So, no, it wasn’t just any high school basketball game.

Everyone knows that sports bring people together like no other, and that is exactly what it did for me. I went from an anxious 12-year-old, with only one friend in a new country, to having a 13-member family of girls who would do absolutely anything for me. I found my place in that foreign world of the Middle East, through basketball. That championship game was the grand finale to one of the most pivotal experiences of my life, right beside my newfound best friends.