Native Sun News Today: Lakota student is serious about academics and athletics

Thursday, January 10, 2019  

Red Cloud senior excels
By James Giago Davies
Native Sun News Today Correspondent
nativesunnews.today

PINE RIDGE — Every school has a Poindexter, the kind of student that earns an academic scholarship to the School of Mines in Rapid City. Red Cloud’s Alejandro Rama fit that role to a T: he was small, well organized, polite, and considerate, the kind of kid you would not be surprised to find out was president of the Chess Club. Ale Rama could have been a superior Poindexter, because like anything else he applies himself to, he would not have stopped until he had built himself into the very best.

But life is complicated, and gifted people tend to have more than one talent. On top of that, Ale’s dad, Matt, was an educator, a mentor, and a superb basketball coach, and there was no way a bright boy like Ale was not going to soak up that spoon-fed knowledge of basketball right from the get. That is why, next fall, Ale will be attending the School of Mines on a basketball scholarship.

Ale is dead serious about his basketball, and after 6-foot-7 Matthew Mors from Yankton, he can be argued the best player in the state. But make no mistake; there is one thing he is even more serious about—getting an education, making sure he gets an engineering degree. When you look at him now, he is the complete package, a senior who looks all ego as he steps onto the basketball court, but then proceeds to play unselfishly, dishing out eye-popping assists, committed to team basketball, playing like a coach on the floor.

Once he smiles and shakes your hand, any thoughts of his being egotistical and self-absorbed fade quickly. He expresses himself well, and his charm is his sincerity and genuine interest about others and what they have to say. Ale has a way with people, especially kids, and as a senior in high school, he already has a well-schooled ability to mentor and teach, not only his teammates at Red Cloud, but little kids, through the Fifth Grade team he coaches, and the basketball camps he hosts. These mentoring skills result partly from natural gifts, but mostly from his close relationship with his dad, Matt, who mentored him the same way since before Ale could walk.

Even before he could talk. Ale: “I didn’t start talking until I was like four. My dad actually thought I was going to be mute, and my dad told me I didn’t even have first words, I just started talking in sentences one day…kinda weird.”

It is not weird when you consider how Ale does many other things in his life. He plans, he organizes, he practices, and when he is ready, he executes. This, he learned from a close working relationship with his father, and so he talked when he needed to talk, when talking accomplished what he needed it to accomplish.

“When I was in kindergarten,” Ale said, “my dad would open up the gym in the morning. My dad gave me workouts to do, so I had a really, really strong base of fundamentals. I got those fundamentals down and was able to move on to more advanced stuff a lot quicker than most kids would. It’s been a grind since I was young, and so I really excelled when I was younger, even though I was a lot smaller than other kids. My dad taught me to be really, really aggressive. Most times when we played he’d be like: ‘Attack, attack, attack!’”

If Matt fretted over his boy, his small size, his not talking, he did not let it alter his mentorship one iota. Matt: “He’s been the smallest his whole life. He’d say I just want to grow, Dad, and I’d say we can’t control that, but— we can become really skilled.”

And become really skilled, Ale did. A single parent, there was nothing Matt could do but bring Ale along to the gym, in the wee hours of the morning, in the late hours of the night, and Ale was a sponge, soaking it all up, processing it before he could even speak, and the result was a little guy, mature beyond his years, always the smallest player on the court, but always the smartest, the player teammates trusted implicitly.

“You can’t have that trust when you’re not working hard,” Ale said. “You gotta be going the hardest at every practice, going your hardest outside of practice, you gotta put forth the most effort than anybody else for them to really believe what you gotta say. If I yell at them, they don’t take it all negatively, they respond in a positive way. They put the effort in and they’re listening and they want to do better.”

As a 5-foot-4 freshman, Ale got some varsity playing time, but over that summer he grew six inches, and then a couple more inches his sophomore year. Once his body caught up to his skills, he became the best player on the floor, not only able to score and rebound, but play tough defense, and understand the game playing out on the floor.

In a glass case at the Red Cloud gym, there is a football that has “Fighting Fourteen” written on it. This refers to the electrifying Red Cloud team of 2017 that lost their first three games, but went on to make the playoffs under the leadership of Duane “Syrup” Big Crow. Like in basketball, Ale excelled at the basics, running and passing, but it was on defense where he actually did his best work, tackling with the ferocity and force of a much bigger player. Like in basketball, Syrup counted on Ale to be more than just a player.

“Syrup trusted me a lot,” Ale said. “Players see things a little bit differently than coaches do; you feel the intensity, the part they do don’t see. That’s how I am with Christian (McGhee, Red Cloud Boys basketball coach). I’m kinda like his eyes on the court, and I kind of help him out seeing things he doesn’t see, or what I think might help. He trusts my opinion because of my basketball IQ, and he’s always open to ideas or suggestions that I might have.”

Ale’s hard tackling was something that came from his mind, more than his body: “If your mindsets like, oh I’m scared, and you are going to slow down for someone, then you’ve already lost, but my mindset is like, you’re gonna take me on, it’s not me taking you on. Even if I don’t have the ball, I’m gonna bring it. It’s not going to be the other way around. Any kind of contact, it’s gonna come from me. I don’t back down from anyone, football, basketball, anything.”

Next year, Ale will take what would be a big step for any high school senior, up to college level, and college life in Rapid City. But for a rez kid, this can be a fateful step, or better put, misstep, that can result in a cascade of consequential negatives that ultimately result in that player’s failure. Ale is not daunted by the challenge.

“I think I handle adversity really well,” Ale said. “I’ve had to deal with it since I was a First Grader, since I’ve played basketball, not just with basketball, but with fans, the type of people that we play against, some racist White people, like from Rapid City. I’ve gotten used to handling adversity and blocking out a lot of things and keeping a focus on what’s important, and that’s always winning, always succeeding, whether at school or sports. Most kids that go off the rez, they have to handle something they are not really prepared for, and so, when they stumble, they just fall. They don’t handle things that go wrong very well, and things are always going to go wrong, some things are not going to go your way, but it’s how well you respond, how well you handle those situations, that’s going to matter.”

James Giago Davies is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota tribe. He can be reached at skindiesel@msn.com

Copyright permission Native Sun News Today