Exchange Students Tackle Football, English In Oregon

 

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Heard on All Things Considered

September 25, 2009 -

MADELEINE BRAND, host:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Madeleine Brand.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

And I'm Robert Siegel.

In the world of high school football, there are small town teams, and then there are the Burnt River Bulls from Unity, Oregon.

Mr. WAYNE WISE (Coach, Burnt River Bulls) We've had eight on our team all year.

TOM GOLDMAN: And this is 8-man football?

Mr. W. WISE: Yes, that's correct.

GOLDMAN: So that means every guy is playing every down of every game.

Mr. W. WISE: Yes.

SIEGEL: That's Burnt River coach, Wayne Wise with NPR's Tom Goldman. And numbers aren't the only challenge facing Wise this season. It's also the fact that most of his players are still trying to figure out the basics of the game.

Today, as part of our high school football series, Friday Night Lives, the improbable story of the Burnt River Bulls.

GOLDMAN: Meet the team. Caleb Andrews, fullback, Hereford, Oregon. Justus Wise, halfback, Hereford, Oregon. So much for the easy part of the line up.

Mr. KAN BAKAI UCHKUN UULU (Left Guard, Burnt River Bulls): Uchkun Uulu Kan Bakai, left guard from Kyrgyzstan.

Mr SZU-YAO SU (Quarterback, Burnt River Bulls) Su Szu-Yao, quarterback from Taiwan.

Mr. JOVAN RADAKOVIC (Left End, Burnt River Bulls): Jovan Radakovic, left end, Serbia.

Mr. JU HYOUNG PARK (Right End, Burnt River Bulls): Ju Hyoung Park, right end from South Korea.

Mr. CEM ERDOGDO (Right Guard, Burnt River Bulls): Cem Erdogdo, right guard, Bremen, Germany.

Mr. BAN DU (Center, Burnt River Bulls): Ban Du, center from China.

GOLDMAN: Six exchange students have turned the Burnt River Bulls into a virtual U.N. in helmets and pads. These 15- to 17-year-olds plopped down in the Eastern Oregon town of Unity, population of about 120, for a crash course in rural America.

Like a lot of remote areas, Unity brings in exchange students to increase funding for schools, and for the cultural give-and-take with the locals. For the new boys, it's also been a crash course in a sport they had never played.

(Soundbite of shouting)

Mr. W. WISE: That all looks pretty good. Looks a lot better than yesterday. Really good.

GOLDMAN: Better than yesterday, that could be a nice slogan for this team. The initial yesterdays were brutal. None more so says coach Wayne Wise than the Bull's High Desert League opener.

Mr. W. WISE: They didn't know what to expect the first game. Their mouths dropped open. And me and (unintelligible) just both tried to explain to them that they were going to get hit or hit somebody. Every play they weren't going to be up against the blue blocking dummy. And they just didn't believe it, I guess, until the whistle blow.

GOLDMAN: It blew for the last time at the end of the third quarter when officials stopped the game. Burnt River trailed 50-6. The Bulls, exhausted and aching, were down to five players.

(Soundbite of whistle)

GOLDMAN: This week, practicing amidst sprinklers will work around them, Coach Wise said. The Bull's ran some offensive plays against no defense, that's all they can do with now nine players. They added a new guy this week.

Mr. GOLIAN TUNG GURAT(ph) (Burnt River Bulls): Golian Tung Gurat from Vietnam.

GOLDMAN: At times, they look like a real football team, though it's safe to say they haven't mastered the basics yet. Here, Justus Wise, the coach's son, tries to make sure everyone in the huddle understands the play will start when he shouts out the second.

Mr. JUSTUS WISE: Hut. 32.

Unidentified Man #1: Okay.

Mr. J. WISE: On two.

Unidentified Man #1: Okay.

Unidentified Man #2: On two.

Unidentified Man #3: On two.

Mr. J. WISE: You know what that means?

Unidentified Man #3: Yes, on two. Yeah.

Mr. J. WISE: Right. River, ready?

BURNT RIVER BULLS TEAM: Right.

GOLDMAN: They leave the huddle and set to play with Wise still not sure that Chinese center Ban Du knows when to hike the ball.

Mr. W. WISE: Hut, down. (Unintelligible) count, set, put.

BURNT RIVER BULLS TEAM: (Unintelligible).

Mr. W. WISE: Yeah.

Mr. W. WISE: That's right, we've done it. I said remember the count.

GOLDMAN: Ban Du forgot. But says Coach Wise, that's what practice is for.

BURNT RIVER BULLS TEAM: Congratulations.

Ms. Darla Derrick (Dorm Mother, Burnt River Bulls Team): Congratulations. How many?

Unidentified Man #4: Four.

Unidentified Man #5: Five.

GOLDMAN: There is practice after practice. Back at the boy's dorm, a few 100 yards from the football field, they do their English language drilling with dorm mother, Darla Derrick. For several, including Ju Hyoung Park from South Korea, English is the toughest part of football - even more than hitting.

Mr. PARK: Almost I can't understand what they say, the coach say, and Caleb say. So, I don't know what should I do. So I embarrassed.

GOLDMAN: A lot less though after last Friday. Way ahead of schedule, the Bulls won. They beat a team with 19 players — 14 of them exchange students, 24 to nothing. Wayne Wise, a perfect match for this team because he's never coached football before this year, called the turnaround, amazing. Ban Du put victory into a Chinese context.

Mr. DU: We are together. We are like many chopsticks together — nobody can break it. So we are eight people, beat the whole team. So I think very proud of us.

GOLDMAN: Coach Wayne Wise says at season's end, the Bulls won't be collecting any trophies, which is why he wants them to have fun and be competitive. With the numbers of kids dwindling in the already tiny town, this could be the last year for football in Unity. If so, what a way to go out.

Tom Goldman, NPR News.

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