The American Life: Playing Basketball for GWU Colonials

After winning the gold medal in European U22 Championship in Slovenia, I spent another season playing in Belarus and won second consecutive National Championship with the local team RTI Minsk becoming a top scorer and MVP of 1994-95 season. I was still a teenager - just under 19 years of age - when I got a call from George Washington University coaches and, barely speaking English, understood their interest in bringing my friend Andrei Krivonos and me over to the GWU Foggy Bottom campus in U.S. Capital.

My teammates and I never got paid for playing basketball in Belarus back in those days so we were able to safely transfer ourselves (and our college credits) into the entirely new environment - NCAA. To say that we were ready for the American adventure is an understatement; we were eager to prove to ourselves and to the rest of the world that we belonged! We were fully aware of difficulties ... and yet we totally embraced them.


Sooner or later in life, each athlete would come to realization that in order to develop oneself even further, one would have to move away from their home...and leave parents, teammates, coaches and hometown buddies behind...

Andrei Krivonos vs Kansas in the Fall of 1996

That day arrived in August of 1995. So there we were at Minsk Central Train Station, two guys with 3 duffel bags staying in front of the train departing for Moscow, surrounded by family members, fellow classmates, teammates, relatives - a total of about 25 people - wishing us fair-well. My brother Nikita, who was only 7 years old at that time - seemed to be disappointed the most. Obviously, Nikita was unaware of the fact that he would also leave Belarus to play high school basketball in the United States in 2006, and later play for Georgetown Hoyas and Wake Forest Demon Deacons. Currently, Nikita is a senior in his final 2011-12 season at Wake.

After a night in a train and a trans-Atlantic 9-hour flight Moscow-Washington, D.C., both, Andrei and I stepped on the U.S. soil and were greeted by then GW Colonials assistant coach Scott Beeten, who was a mastermind behind the plan of bringing Belarusian players to the U.S. Capital. Since then, with an ongoing support of head coach Mike Jarvis, there were four (!) Belarusian players on the team along with Belarusian strength and conditioning coach Gennadi Bratichko, and everyone started calling us “Belarusian Mafia”.

Koul vs. Camby, GWU upsets #1 ranked UMass in 1996

Needless to say, my Freshman year in college was a year to remember. The biggest challenge was the language barrier - all of us arrived to GWU with zero to none English. Though we had English in Belarus throughout high school, the speaking skills were real weak due to the lack of language practice, English books/newspapers and TV programs. All of it took its tall as we only knew the basic alphabet and the key phrases: “London is a Capital of Great Britain” and “I am hungry!”. At least we were able to communicate that. The first phrase was quite useless; however, the latter helped us to survive:)!

Playing @Xavier was a very exciting challenge

Some particular days of my freshman year I still consider to be some sort of a bad dream. And here is the sample of one regular day schedule so you can get a feel for it:

AM

• 6:15 Wake Up
• 6:45 Be at the gym and prepare mats for Karate practice
• 7:00 - 8:00 Karate practice: GWU basketball used it in pre-season
• 8:15 - 10:00 English as a second language class
• 10:15 - 11:45 Major courses

PM

• 12:30 - 4:00 Basketball Practice
• 4:10 - 5:30 Major courses
• 6:00 - 8:00 Basketball team Study Hall
• 8:15 - 9:30 Tutors
• 11:00 going to bad and forgetting your own name:)

Multiply that hectic schedule with constant language barriers, being homesick, cultural shock, American fast food, adjustments on basketball court, constant physical fatigue and you get a perfect picture of what we went through on everyday basis. But the beauty of it... it was all worth it!


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