Caption: Coach Ratke practices basic drills and passes with his junior varsity athletes in the back court after school. [by Dr. Cristina Meier]
by Filipe Cruz
As a basketball coach at PACA, Matheus Ratke brings a lot of experience with him when training the student athletes at PACA. His primary role is to coach the JV Boys and Varsity Boys basketball teams, but he also helps train the Little Warriors elementary athletes who participate in this after school activity. During his time as coach, he has influenced the playing skills of students from elementary level to varsity.
Ratke has high expectations for each group of students that he coaches, especially as the season is coming to an end. Although the junior varsity team does not have as many games to play as Varsity toward the end of the season, they will both compete at NR in upcoming weeks.
The Varsity Boys team will travel to NR on Sunday, October 27 to participate in the Big 8 tournament from October 27 to October 30. The junior varsity boys will participate in the Little 10 tournament from Sunday, November 10 to Wednesday, November 13.
Coach Matheus started to play basketball when he was 13 in a social program. There he started to stand out. Then a team in Campinas called him to play for them. But he was in a junior team at the time, which was disbanded. Still, he had such an impressive performance that his coach asked him to play in the professional team. He said that’s when he started to really increase his abilities, because he was playing with professionals who were all adults when he was just 17.
When asked about his expectations for the upcoming games, his biggest concern is facing their strongest opponents at the tournament in NR.
“We have two matches against very strong teams: one is St. Pauls and the other is EAC. These games will help us train for the Big Eight,” said Ratke, “It will be particularly good to face EAC because we’ll play against them in the group stage of the Big 8. So, I believe playing against them here will help us identify areas we need to improve for the Big 8 championship.”
Coach Ratke believes that the recent loss to Chapel will help the team to take their current training program to a new level. This was reflected in their next game in which PACA faced Graded on October 3 and won the game with a score of 48:29.
“This has helped us improve, as evidenced by our good result in the next game against Graded,” said Ratke.”I think we’ve been training harder and returning to the important basic fundamentals that we can’t overlook in the game.”
In discussing the competition against Graded, Coach Ratke compared the different matches PACA played against them this season. PACA lost the first game against Chapel on their home court with a score of 27:40.
“In the game where we managed to beat Graded, it was great because we lost to them in the first match,” said Ratke “This time, we played much tougher, helping each other and giving our best on the court. This resulted in solid defense that limited their scoring. On offense, we worked the ball better and looked for better shots, which led to good shots that went in and scored points.””
Ratke believes that PACA will continue to improve if they work on their defense and look for better shots at the basket. He has a lot of hope for the team to grow in the area of defense, especially in teamwork, jumping to the ball and marking without resting. He saw this help PACA in their game against Chapel which they barely lost with a score of 40:41.
“Defense has been a strong aspect of our team,” said Ratke. “I also think camaraderie is important; we have a united team, which is a good quality for PACA.”
Finally, Coach Ratke reminds his athletes that their character development and faith in Christ is the most important aspect of being part of his team.
“Another thing is that we play for an audience of one, and when we do that, we don’t want to give up on the court,” said Ratke. “This motivates us to give our best and honor God with our efforts, so I think that’s also a strong point.”
