March Madness and the Mighty Gaels

28 March 2010

Ambassador Bleich with Australian basketball players in the U.S. last December.

Although I tend to agree with the President on most things, he and I parted company this year on one very important matter: the St. Mary’s Gaels v. Villanova match-up in the NCAA tournament.

Last December, I visited the St. Mary’s Gaels basketball team in Moraga, California. St. Mary’s is a small college a few miles from my home in the Bay Area. A friend had invited me over to meet the players because St. Mary’s boasts the highest percentage of Australian players of any college team outside of Australia.

In fact, five of the players on the men’s squad and two of the women’s players came from the Australian Institute of Sports here in Canberra. Several of the players had help from Judy Freudenberger, the EducationUSA adviser in our Embassy, to make the connection between St. Mary’s and AIS’s robust study abroad programs. After seeing them practice and play, I picked them to go to the final 8, despite the President’s prediction that they’d go out in the second round.

This month the Gaels proved what U.S.-Australian cooperation is all about (and gave me some bragging rights in the White House). Although the Gaels started the tournament seeded in the bottom half of their bracket, they knocked off heavily favored Richmond in the first round and then stunned No. 2 seed Villanova to reach the Sweet Sixteen.

The team’s break-out star in the tournament, Omar Samhan, occasionally complained about Vegemite being served at the training table. But when asked seriously about playing with a squad of mostly Australians, he noted what study abroad is all about -- that their skill, teamwork and playfulness brought a new dimension that was a key element in the Gaels’ success this year.

“They bring so much of their culture to the team and everyday activities,” he told sports writers. “I don’t think people realize how different Australia is; the way they joke and the way they look at life and it’s great to have them. It’s really brought a whole country into this. The whole country of Australia is into Saint Mary’s basketball and our games are televised nationally over there so it’s quite an experience.”

After yesterday’s loss to Baylor, I’ll be watching the rest of the March Madness NCAA tournament from here in Australia with a little less enthusiasm. But one defeat does not change the fact that they made the Bay Area proud, they’ve made Australia proud, they made St. Mary’s and AIS proud, and they demonstrated yet again how powerful Americans and Australians can be when we work together.

Most of all though they helped me beat the President of the United States in the March Madness pool (I had Kansas losing in the final four). Next season, I’m betting on the Gaels again, and I’m going to send them all (including you, Omar) a case of Vegemite!