Most Maltese, even sportsmen, suffer unfortunately from a level of inferiority complex, especially when one tries to compare himself/herself or tries to compete with international opposition.
Team sports suffer much more than individual sports as the possibility to merge a competent team of a high level is almost impossible, given our small population and selection limitations. The lack of consistent regular competitive matches against equal-level or, better still, higher-level opponents continue to push further back our technical prowess which might be comparable to international standards at a young age but which then gradually dissolve back as adulthood seeps in.
Lately we had the great feat by the local football national team that beat Hungary, thereby registering their first home win in over 20 years.
In today’s article I want to highlight the fact that such things also happen abroad and the story will revolve around the Californian Institute of Technology (better known as Caltech) which is found in Pasadena, California.
Anybody who is into science will surely have heard of Caltech as it is a world-renowned scientific institute. It has a student population of around 850 and is very renowned for its academic courses in science and mathematics.
Albert Einstein himself lectured at this college whilst Linus Pauling (who won two different Nobel prizes, in 1954 for chemistry and 1962 for peace and together with Einstein are regarded by some the two greatest scientists of the 20th century) was a graduate and subsequent professor at Caltech.
Apart from this, 31 other Nobel Prize winners (apart from famous people like Gordon Moore who put forward the famous Moore’s Law in computing and saber Bhatia, founder of hotmail) have either taught or studied at CalTech, as the this small campus in sub-urban Los Angeles draws many of America's top sciences students with its extremely high admission standards and then puts tough academic demands on the students.
Unfortunately, on the negative side, Caltech is also renowned for having weak sports teams competing in the national collegiate championships (NCAA) and basketball is no exception.
However, just days ago, the Caltech men basketball team was in the headlines after ending an eleven year losing streak.
Like other NCAA Division III schools, Caltech does not offer athletic scholarships. As a result, while the school attracts some of the nation’s best and brightest students, it does not necessarily draw the athletically gifted.
Widely regarded, as stated already above, as one of the nation’s finest academic institutions, athletic success is not one of the top priorities on the Pasadena campus. Students often miss nights of sleep trying to stay on top of their quantum physics homework or manipulate theories of relativity rather than to spend time to practice sports.
Most sports coaches begin their season with the goal of winning more than they lose, hopefully getting to the top spots in the league and moving to the ultimate aim of winning a national championship.
At Caltech, the scenario is much different as the Beavers (the nickname of the Caltech basketball team) begin each season just trying to win at least a game and the coach is excited when all of his players show up to practice after just more than a couple of hours of sleep.
If Valletta hosted and welcomed thousands of people for the ‘Notte Magica’ last Saturday, it was surely a ‘Notte Magica’ for the Caltech basketball squad and staff and also for the college’s directors as the 6th of January brought about Caltech’s first NCAA Division 3 win after 207 defeats, a losing streak dating to 1996. Their last win was against Principia during the 1995/96 season.
In fact, Caltech managed to beat Bard College of New York 81-52, a surprisingly large margin after a somewhat one-sided game. The Beaver’s coach, Roy Dow, said in a post-game interview that Caltech had been working hard lately and were expecting a win to come but they never imagined quite an easy win.
It was somewhat of a relief for the coach to win a game in his task of trying to convince his players that they could have the ability to produce good performances. However this feat was only the first half of his program as now Caltech will try to end an even longer losing streak.
With a 1 to 207 win record in their last 208 NCAA contests, the Beavers are now hoping to end a 245 consecutive defeat record in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. This losing streak goes back almost 22 years.
League games within this Athletic Conference will commence in the near future and Caltech, now experiencing a high, will try to make 2007 a memorable year in basketball.
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