We Have Only Unyielding Spirit

These days, the basketball players of Korea Tender walk a hill behind of the accommodation in Kusung of Youngin even if the season opening begins soon. Do they have time to spare? Not at all! Even if they want to training, there is no training center.

Because the parent company suffers financial difficulties, the team also suffers lot of difficulties including uncertainty of existence of the team. The players spend time around the accommodation in the morning and have training only for teamwork at the training center of Myungji or Kyunghee University in the afternoon. They never think individual train at nighttime. When they have a practice game, they arrive the center 30 minutes earlier for shot training.

To make thing worse is that they don`t have a weight-training center all of other teams has. So the players use private health center individually. It is very uncomfortable to have training next to the middle age woman members.

However, they are waiting for the season opening at 26th. Even if Chun Hyung-soo, the main player, was transferred to Mobis, the players strengthen their will “Let`s be united.” Only the way for them to survive is that they have a good record in this season to be sold other company.

`Hungry Sprits` is indispensable factor for them. They are not supplied even uniforms, so they are wearing different color T-shirts in training. They can stay alive by the sheer force of will to live.

Lee Sang-yun, the Acting Director of the team and was a sales man once, spoke “We are under the worst circumstance, however, we have very strong desire.” The team giving the image of cartoon `Terrible Mercenary Team` defeated SK Knights by 92-86 at 23rd, and recorded 7 wins and 2 defeats in 9 practice games recently.

Jong-Seok Kim kjs0123@donga.com