David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants Read Online Free PDF Page B

dress when he went to see his military superiors. He spoke Arabic like a native, and handled a camel as if he had been riding one all his life. He didn’t care what people in the military establishment thought about his “untrained rabble” because he had little invested in the military establishment. And then there’s David. He must have known that duels with Philistines were supposed to proceed formally, with the crossing of swords. But he was a shepherd, which in ancient times was one of the lowliest of all professions. He had no stake in the finer points of military ritual.
    We spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that prestige and resources and belonging to elite institutions make us better off. We don’t spend enough time thinking about the ways in which those kinds of material advantages limit our options. Vivek Ranadivé stood on the sidelines as the opposing teams’ parents and coaches heaped abuse on him. Most people would have shrunk in the face of that kind of criticism. Not Ranadivé. It was really random. I mean, my father had never played basketball before. Why should he care what the world of basketball thought of him? Ranadivé coached a team of girls who had no talent in a sport he knew nothing about. He was an underdog and a misfit, and that gave him the freedom to try things no one else even dreamt of.

6.
    At the nationals, the Redwood City girls won their first two games. In the third round, their opponents were from somewhere deep in Orange County. Redwood City had to play them on their own court, and the opponents supplied their own referee as well. The game was at eight o’clock in the morning. The Redwood City players left their hotel at six to beat the traffic. It went downhill from there. The referee did not believe in “one, two, three, attitude, hah! ” He didn’t think that playing to deny the inbounds pass was basketball. He began calling one foul after another.
    “They were touch fouls,” Craig said. Ticky-tacky stuff. The memory was painful.
    “My girls didn’t understand,” Ranadivé said. “The ref called something like four times as many fouls on us as on the other team.”
    “People were booing,” Craig said. “It was bad.”
    “A two-to-one ratio is understandable, but a ratio of four to one?” Ranadivé shook his head.
    “One girl fouled out.”
    “We didn’t get blown out. There was still a chance to win. But…”
    Ranadivé called the press off. He had to. The Redwood City players retreated to their own end and passively watched as their opponents advanced down the court. The Redwood City girls did not run. They paused and deliberated between each possession. They played basketball the way basketball is supposed to be played, and in the end they lost—but not before proving that Goliath is not quite the giant he thinks he is.
    1  Roger Craig, it should be said, is more than simply a former professional athlete. Retired now, he was one of the greatest running backs in the history of the National Football League.

1.
    When Shepaug Valley Middle School was built, to serve the children of the baby boom, three hundred students spilled out of school buses every morning. The building had a line of double doors at the entrance to handle the crush, and the corridors inside seemed as busy as a highway.
    But that was long ago. The baby boom came and went. The bucolic corner of Connecticut where Shepaug is located—with its charming Colonial-era villages and winding country lanes—was discovered by wealthy couples from New York City. Real-estate prices rose. Younger families could no longer afford to live in the area. Enrollment dropped to 245 students, then to just over 200. There are now eighty children in the school’s sixth grade. Based on the number of students coming up through the region’s elementary schools, that number may soon be cut in half, which means that the average class size in the school will soon fall well below the national average. A