The Prospector
March 29, 2013
Sports
11
Leaving a mark Borges temporarily retires for new child JASON CHEN
AZADEH RONGERE editor-in-chief
After coaching one of the most successful teams on campus for seven years, varsity field hockey coach Jill Borges, who is five months pregnant with a boy, will temporarily retire to take care of her three children. The varsity field hockey team has been ranked in the top five of their league ever since Borges began coaching. Back in 2000, before Borges coached, the team won the C-league in the Blossom Hill Valley League and advanced to the B-league. With Borges coaching, the team held steady top rankings and qualified for CCS five years in a row. This past season the team finally won the league title in the B-league after being co-champions with Leland HIgh School the year before. Besides just coaching, Borges is also a P.E. teacher. Prior to coaching field hockey, Borges also coached varsity girls tennis and varsity girls soccer. While she enjoyed these experiences, coaching field hockey has been her favorite due to her longtime love for the game. “I love coaching; it’s the best part of my job,” Borges said. “I
get to hang out with the team and get to know the players better than any other students. In my [P.E.] classes I have 40 to 45 kids, so I can’t get to know everyone on a personal level. And I love the competition.” Borges, who attended Monta Vista High School, played as a goalie and was captain her senior year. She was eager to start coaching when she was first hired at the school, but since the position was filled she was unable to. Two years after she began coaching tennis, Borges started coaching JV field hockey and became the varsity coach in 2009. Borges is proud of the players she groomed, all of whom try out with no prior experience, into skilled athletes. One of these athletes, senior Jackie Ballin, recently accepted an athletic scholarship to Mercy College. “The reason I coach is to make sure the girls have a good experience and make sure they leave high school feeling like they accomplished something,” Borges said. “It’s very sad for me to leave because I love the team. And I am okay with making sacrifices to coach, but not when my sacrifices are my kids. I feel like I would have been selfish to continue to coach.” Borges considers the field hockey team an extension of her
The art of
Kyudo COURTESY OF MIRA SIMMEL
LAURA KAO features editor
For juniors Mira Simmel and Hyewan Kim, kyūdō is not simply an after school sport, but a martial art that involves the mind, body and spirit. The ancient art of kyūdō originated in Japan and is known as “the way of the bow.” Unlike Western archery, practicing kyūdō is not merely nocking an arrow, aiming at the target and shooting. There is an entire concept and art form in which the archer’s spirit is heavily trained. According to Simmel, the ideal archer is supposed to be able to “stand quietly without any interference from outside, not thinking about anything else except for the target or your shooting or your spirit. You don’t [consciously] let go of the string, [it is] supposed to naturally slip out of your hand.” Requiring an entire textbook to explain its details, kyūdō is a complicated art form. There are different movements, postures and hand positions depending on the situation. As seen from the basic greetings that demonstrate deference to one’s senior, speaking in honorifics and cleaning the practice area, kyūdō is built on a system of respect. “I used to not be a very patient person ... but then because of the slow movements, [kyūdō] teaches you patience, inner peace, discipline and manners,” Simmel said. “I am half
Japanese, but because I haven’t lived in Japan, I didn’t completely understand the manners or the ‘keigo’ – the proper way of talking to an upperclassman. Since I’ve started, I talk [in a] more proper way … [I now avoid] things that I shouldn’t do or things that would embarrass not myself, but my teachers instead.” In addition to their weekly two and a half hour practices, Simmel and Kim’s kyūdō group rents out the Foothill College gym to have a full 28-meter range for practice. “For me, learning about the Japanese culture is really fun,” Kim said. “I can learn more about the Japanese people by learning about the rules that apply to kyūdō because this is a sport that requires etiquette and respect towards the teacher, or ‘sensei.’” Despite kyūdō’s intense attention to detail and overall complexity, it develops a sense of community among those who practice the art form. There is a long lineage of senpai who pass along their knowledge and appreciation of kyūdō to their students. At the international seminars, students are able to meet students from other groups in countries from the United States to Brazil to many others. Athletes able to come together during the week to shoot for fun and share what they know about kyūdō. As kyūdō is such and international sport, Simmel and Kim know that wherever they choose to go, they can continue practicing it, whether they remain in the United States or travel to Japan.
own family, which made her decision to leave even more difficult. “I didn’t plan not to coach next year, but as I started thinking about the logistics of how I could raise [my daughters] Brooklyn and Emry and the newborn while coaching seemed impossible. I mean the girls love coming to the games, but they have to be the first ones dropped off and the last ones picked up from daycare because I choose to coach. It came to a point where it just seemed unfair for my own kids.” Even though Borges found her replacement, she did not disclose the name. Borges’ last day of school will be on April 23, while her caesarean section is scheduled on May 22. Borges’ farewell bid is not permanent, but she still expressed her gratitude for the teams that made field hockey one of the most successful sports on campus. When her children go to school, she wants to resume coaching and she even looks forward to coaching her daughter’s team in the future. “Ultimately, I want to thank all of my players for being there and choosing to play, being enthusiastic about it, and putting forth the effort we needed to win,” Borges said. “I can’t take all the credit because we had a great and crazy team.”