Posted by michaelp on Wednesday, May 24, 2017 in 2017 Blog post.

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— MikeyP (@michaelbpelleg1) May 24, 2017

Early on in our trip I realized that Cefalu has plenty of basketball courts and soccer fields. The basketball courts are a little more difficult to come by, but the point is there are plenty of areas for children to disperse from their tech filled lives and be outside and run and play and get dirty and compete, however, i initially never saw these arenas filled with crowds of kids sprinting and others kicking around just waiting for their chance to get into the game. Back home my friends and I used to host pick-up basketball games all the time and most of us had played sports our entire lives and once we had finished up our last football season senior year in November we found ourselves bored. For me I just missed being able to compete. So at Vanderbilt after all the stresses of work and social life I find myself just missing to get out and compete so I would just go to the rec by myself and grab a ball and shoot around and wait until I could get into a game with all these people just like me, just dying for some competition. The courts are usually packed around 5 or 6 and there are often around 10 people on the side of each court waiting to hop in the next one. I was really hoping to find courts packed with Italians all balling out, however, I could not. The one hardwood court in the city is covered by a small bubble and the arena is closed out to non-members. This pretty much leaves us with school courts and even those we can not get into during school hours. I wondered why they had all of these courts, that no one even used, and we could not even get on them? But one day we showed up to this ratty old court near the Deco and a bunch of kids were playing around the court; it seemed to be some form of soccer and basketball since the kids were kicking the ball around a good bit (many played soccer over basketball I presume) and yet at times shooting towards the hoop. There were two kids shooting an actual basketball and we made our way down towards them. Salvatore, 15, was the oldest and most skilled of the group, and his younger counterpart Gabriella had clearly been educated in the nature of the sport. We had another friend, Mattia, 13, ended up joining us later. They all played in a league, however, they said they practice most of the time on their own. This helped me realize that this is just typical Sicilians for you. Its not that they don’t like to compete; it is just that they don’t emphasize the competitive nature because it is just part of their daily lives. Everywhere you go you see kids playing in the streets, running around and getting into mischief after school, and kicking balls around on the beach. Its part of the relaxed nature of the Sicilian lifestyle. Sports for them are not about trying to beat your opponent, but about enjoying the day and having a good time. Sicilians are always outside and active and it seems they just don’t stress over things like whose kid’s team won their little league championship or whose kid starts and who doesn’t and so on.