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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWSJ: The Coach of Nigeria’s Basketball Team Is From...Vermont
Will Voigt grew up in Vermont, played college soccer in California and moved to Idaho earlier this summer. But he hasnt been home much since then, and he wont be until after the Olympics. Hes been too busy working: Will Voigt is the coach of the Nigerian mens national basketball team.
This is more than the most unexpected job of Voigts career. It may be the most unusual marriage of any coach and any country in the entire Olympic Games.
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Its a wild story that continues in Rio after multiple stops in basketball hinterlands on several continents. And it began in a town that was rural even for Vermont. Voigt grew up on what used to be a dairy farm in Cabot, where he was one of 18 kids in the graduating class of his tiny high school, which was one of the smallest in the state. There were more cows than people, said his former coach Steve Pratt.
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Still, people in Cabot sensed that Voigt would do something interesting with his life in part because of who his parents are. His father, Fran Voigt, founded the New England Culinary Institute. His mother, Ellen Bryant Voigt, was Vermonts poet laureate and won a MacArthur genius fellowship last year for her poetry. The gene pool, said his father, would not have anticipated this.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coach-of-nigerias-basketball-team-is-from-vermont-1469481350
Cabot is a classic hill town in Northeastern VT. It's claim to fame is Cabot cheese and butter and other dairy products.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)Thanks for posting this!
I was unaware that Vermont had an ABA team...the Vermont Frost Heaves.
cali
(114,904 posts)Great funny story from SI about it:
The noise still rang in my ears. It had come with each assault on the basket, each steal, each three-pointerin screams, cheers and clattering cowbells from people who, vacuum-packed into the stands, had turned the Barre Municipal Auditorium into a multiple fire-code violation. Not 16 months earlier, in December 2005, we had announced to a skeptical state that we existed. And here our pro basketball team, the Vermont Frost Heaves, had just won an American Basketball Association title, sweeping past the Texas Tycoons, 143-95, for Vermonts first national championship in any professional team sport. As the sports anchor for the local CBS affiliate, J.J. Cioffi, put it in his postgame stand-up that night, From no one, to No. 1, in just one year!
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http://www.si.com/longform/2015/frost-heaves/index.html
Team mascot:
Wilms
(26,795 posts)There's something about VT. And as a T-shirt I had way back said, "300,000 cows can't be wrong"!
cali
(114,904 posts)I take it you're talking about Walden, VT. My neck of the woods.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)And yes. They're in Walden...or Walden Corners it may be....just up the road from Cabot. I'm overdue for a visit.
cali
(114,904 posts)You know why Walden is better than Cabot?
Because it's actually in the Kingdom, not just bordering it.
Ever been to Lake Willoughby?
I recently wrote this op about a fascinating place to visit in the Kingdom- and it's close by Willoughby.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028074309
Wilms
(26,795 posts)I think it was Lake Willoughby that I visited, a looong time ago. Ice fishing of all things!
A guy from Hardwick hosted this flatlander on the expedition.
aw, that's cute.
Been ice fishing on Willoughby quite a few times- or rather visiting people in their ice shacks.
More fun in the summer.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)As a flatlander, it should not be up to me to point out that they are not "shacks". They're shanties!
The one's with the woodstoves in them made me
cali
(114,904 posts)And my son never lets me forget it. His dad's family are longtime Vermonters.
You have to be born here or you're a flatlander forever.
(I would never have visited a shanty that didn't have a woodstove, flatlander that I am)
Wilms
(26,795 posts)But in my neck of the mountains, I'm "not from here".