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Everett Basketball Coach Brings Skills To Courts In Tibet

 

Everett native Bill Johnson has been coaching basketball for the last three years in an unlikely place: a remote village in Tibet called Ritoma.

 

Johnson has always been into sports, and actually played basketball for a few years overseas with an international league. He also was a huge fan of Everett’s minor league baseball team, the AquaSox. In fact, he loved them so much that he was a mascot for a short time.

 

“Yeah, I was the hot dog, Frank the Hot Dog. And I got promoted quote, un-quote, to Webbly the Frog.”

 

You might think that time spent as a mascot wouldn’t help with your coaching, but you’d be wrong. Johnson says not being able to speak while in costume meant he used his hands and body a lot to communicate.

 

That skill has proven an important one while teaching Tibetan monks and nomads how to play basketball when dealing with a language barrier.

 

Johnson says they created their own version of the game based on pulling together pieces of information about NBA players or through stories about basketball. And, as Johnson learned quickly, their version can be rough.

 

“You’re not so much showing off your skill, you’re showing off your manhood on this basketball court. And, in fact, back in the day they didn’t pick players based on skill. They picked players based on the best fighters and the strongest guys,"he said. "It’s just guys banging into each other, really physical, elbows flying.”

 

Johnson says even with all this physicality and a makeshift court sometimes riddled with holes, the fact that he gets to play with these guys is really fun.

 

“You know you’re coming together and making something almost musical in a sense. You’re building something, and it’s really a lot of improv," he said. "But you have that understanding where it’s going to go.”

 

Johnson says he feels honored that this is his actual job, and he gets to create those connections with his team.

 

And now, thanks to a new documentary, he's able to share the story of his team with the world. The film, directed by Academy Award winner Ruby Yang, is called "Ritoma." Johnson is one of the principle characters in the film that focuses on the small village of 1,500.

 

Ariel first entered a public radio newsroom in 2004 while in school at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. It was love at first sight. After graduating from Bradley, she went on to earn a Master's degree in Public Affairs Reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield. Ariel has lived in Indiana, Ohio and Alaska reporting on everything from salmon spawning to policy issues concerning education. She's been a host, a manager and now rides shotgun with Kirsten Kendrick as the Morning Edition producer at KNKX.