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Animals inspire professor’s book

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The great naturalist and adventurer John Muir once said, “Any glimpse into the life of an animal quickens our own and makes it so much the larger and better in every way.”

College of William and Mary anthropology professor Barbara King would certainly agree. In her newest book, “Being with Animals: Why We Are Obsessed with the Furry, Scaly, Feathered Creatures Who Populate Our World,” King explores the various relationships that exist between animals and humans.

“I began to think about how people all around the world, in different ways, are immersed in bonding with animals,” King said. “‘Being With Animals’ is my attempt to think through that ‘why’ question, and in writing it, I read heavily in anthropology, psychology and religious studies.”

For King, this book is a combination of her two greatest interests.

“As an anthropologist, it is so significant that we became human in our interaction with other animals,” King said.

Primates have served as a special point of interest for King, who believes they are distinct from other animals.

“It seems to me we can only understand what it means to be human by understanding our similarities with and differences from these evolutionary cousins,” King said.

According to King, the bond humans and animals share is deep and ancient.

“Part of my desire in writing the book was to trace the deepest roots of that experience,” King said. “As far back as prehistoric cave paintings and animal-human burials, we can see hints of emotional connections.”

While the relationship between humans and animals has endured for many centuries, it cannot be clearly defined; King explores the ambiguities in her book.

“I’d be delighted if the book raises more questions than it answers about the relationship of the past and the present,” King said.

King’s research is an important part of her job at the College, influencing her teaching by providing a first-hand outlook to share with her students.

“[My research], at least I hope, enlivens my teaching because I can talk about what I learned by observing baboons in Kenya or gorillas at the National Zoo, or writing about the prehistoric roots of religion, or researching how we became Homo sapiens,” King said.

King’s enthusiasm for animals is obvious to those who work closely with her. Brittany Fallon ’11 has been working with professor King on a proposal for enrichment programs for chimpanzees at local zoos.

“Professor King’s passion for animals — not just primates — is one that she exudes on a daily basis,” Fallon said. “Her compassion translates beyond her job as a professor, researcher or even author. She really lives her love of animals.”

Cinema with soul

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While Williamsburg may lack tourists in the month of February, it does not lack entertainment. To bring global culture to the city, the College of William and Mary will host the third annual Global Film Festival. The festival will infuse Williamsburg with a bit of international flavor. The festival, which begins this Thursday, strives to bring the College and the Williamsburg community together to appreciate films — and, this year, music — from around the world.

“The relationship between these two mediums runs very, very deep, and together they generate some of the most powerful forms of cultural expression throughout the world today,” professor Timothy Barnard said. “Bringing music into our festival has made it considerably more festive and dynamic.”

Barnard has coordinated the festival since its inception in 2008 and said that this year’s broad theme of film and music has made the festival quite different from previous years that he has worked on the film festival.

“It has helped and made things more challenging,” Barnard said. “Bringing in a nine-person music and dance troupe to perform, for example, is an entirely different logistical challenge than setting up the visit of a film actor or director.”

Developing a free film festival on a modest budget is a difficult task that requires months of planning, even without a complicated theme.

“First we studied film festivals, their history and the important role in international circuits of distribution, then we took a field trip to [Washington] D.C. to attend a festival and interview festival directors. We started planning our own consultations with local professionals to help us move forward,” Barnard said. “Then we broke students into teams responsible for the website, publicity, the program, media relations, special events, a documentary project … Since then it’s been an increasing frenzy of increasingly complicated planning, doing and logistics.”

The festival is a joint effort of Barnard and a sizable team of student interns, many of whom took the Film Festival Production class last fall with Barnard.

“I am very grateful to have the chance to have a significant impact on the festival event,” Madeline Chessman ’12 said. “This is not your average paper-pushing internship.”

Interns have been heavily involved in the planning of the festival, helping to make many of the major decisions regarding planning, events, scheduling and publicity efforts.

“One of the main ideas behind the festival is to democratize film, and the coordination process has been very democratic as well,” Chessman said. “I am a sophomore in college, and I have written film publicity copy, made arrangements for a red carpet and made business calls to Hollywood talent agencies. It’s thrilling to know that if I want something in the festival to happen, I can make it happen.”

The vetting process for films is an arduous process, according to Barnard, but with luck will result in a thoroughly enjoyable festival.

“The selection process takes place over many conversations and months of searching a range of sources as to what’s out there,” Barnard said. “This is followed by a period of determining which films are actually available, and then trying to secure filmmakers —and this year, musicians — who will be available to come to the festival … and then that all remains in flux for a frustratingly long period of time. It’s the nature of the festival and filmmaking beast, unfortunately.”

Despite challenges, Barnard and his team have managed to book a full weekend of movies, music and speakers for the festival. Each day is filled with culturally diverse events that will entertain audiences with all different interests.

“The Blind Boys of Alabama may be our biggest coup; since booking them, they’ve only become bigger and bigger celebrity presences, with a David Letterman appearance and a performance at the White House only weeks ago,” Barnard said. “[Director] Dean DeBlois coming to present his stunning film “Heima” was another real coup; we knew the film would be a big hit with William and Mary students who love Sigur Ros and we considered just showing it on its own.”

Those involved believe that this year’s festival will be diverse and interesting, featuring films ranging from modern Bollywood to silent Frank Capra films. All films will be shown at the Kimball Theatre in Merchant’s Square. “Heima,” at 9:30 p.m. Saturday, will be the first film at the theatre to ever be shown in high definition.

“The variety of films, performances and guests is positively phenomenal considering our budget,” Chessman said. “The narrative and technical quality of the films will be outstanding as well — many of the films have won notable awards.”

The Global Film Festival will kick off on Thursday night with four main events ranging from a “Worlds of Music in Williamsburg” community documentary project to a viewing of the Bollywood film “A Match Made by God.”

The festival continues on friday with a viewing of “La Vie en Rose” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” at 7 and 10 p.m.

All showings and events held at the Kimball will be free of charge but they do require tickets. For a full schedule of events for the festival, visit Globalfilm2010.blogs.wm.edu.

Time to go gender-blind

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Once an all-male, all-white school and now a place that welcomes all comers, the College of William and Mary has done much in the effort for openness and diversity. Now, by forcing the Student Assembly to water down its gender-blind housing bill, the administration has shirked its responsibility to this legacy. We implore it to reconsider its stance.

For better or for worse, our dorms are designed to protect our students from their own libidos. The idea is that by arranging rooms, halls and units by gender, students should be able to brush their teeth in the morning before being confronted with sexual tension — which is not altogether a bad idea.

But not all of our students are straight, so not everyone is offered this simple, and important, comfort. Call this what it is: inequality, plain and simple. Especially during the awkward transition of freshman year, the negative situations in which new students can find themselves as a result of this policy are simply not acceptable at a school like our own.

Students have attempted to address this discrimination for years by trying to create a space or spaces in which housing assignments are made without consideration of gender. Other schools have had great success in doing the same, but the College has been reticent to do so. Recently, when the SA tried again, the administration pushed back, offering a stopgap instead.

The question is not whether gender blind housing will come to the College, but when. Over 30 campuses across the country have adopted gender-neutral housing policies — with about half doing so in the last two years. The College is still positioned to join the vanguard of a national movement by acting now — or it can tow its current discriminatory line and bring up the rear.

It seems so foreign and unnatural that our administration once balked at allowing black students or women into the College for decades. But the same dynamics are at play right now. We expect better of our administration, and of our College. 
 
 


Global warming skeptics should chill out their winter whining

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Washington, D.C. declared another snow emergency in expectation of more snow Monday, after being walloped by two back-to-back blizzards last week. Indeed, this past week it was reported that 49 of the 50 states had at least some snow on the ground — only Hawaii has been spared. The snowfall this winter has broken records across the country, while simultaneously fueling right-wing media and the blogosphere’s frenzied denunciations of, as one Fox News journalist described it, “the global warming hysteria.”

First, the facts: “climate change,” as reported by National Public Radio, “is the long-term trend of atmospheric conditions across large regions, even the whole planet. Changes in climate are slow and measured in decades, not weeks.” According to Dr. Jeff Masters, a meteorologist with WeatherUnderground.com, “we still have winter even if temperatures have warmed on average… about one degree Fahrenheit over the past 100 years.” The recent weather, which many scientists attribute to more water vapor in the air due to warming oceans, and the surprisingly strong effects of El Nino, in addition to the season also being, well, winter, is in no way indicative of larger climate trends.

That’s not the impression you would get from many right-wing media outlets. In a Feb. 8 editorial, The Washington Times wrote, “those who value freedom should thank Mother Nature for her sense of humor, undermining global warming one flake at a time.”

Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity suggested that the weather might be a message from God to climate change protestors to cease and desist: “All right, take a look at the protestors … shivering in the snow as they protest the Earth’s rising temperature as a foot of snow falls. Now maybe it’s just a coincidence … or maybe the big guy up there is trying to send a message to these people.”

Glenn Beck, possibly the most frightening, yet amusing commentator on Fox News said, “If you’re in the New York area — well, if you’re in half the country — they got a snowstorm. Aren’t you sick of this global warming thing?” The list of absurd remarks continues. Erick Erickson of Redstate.com wrote that climate change activism “is just the 21st century equivalent of the 5000-year-old sun worshipping religions.” The “30 inches of snow in Washington, D.C.,” Erickson mocks, “means a new federal agency to ‘study and report on the changing climate,’” citing a recent proposal by President Barack Obama’s Administration.

You may ask — and rightly so — so what? What difference does it make that the climate change skeptics are shooting their mouths off, using the recent blizzards to advance their ludicrous ideas? Well, their talking may be working. According to a joint January 2010 survey by Yale University and George Mason University, only 57 percent of Americans believe climate change is occurring, down from 71 percent in October 2008.

An erosion of belief in the public certainly influences the policy-making process, as legislators become more wary to tackle climate change if it means less votes at home. While it’s hard to know what’s causing this erosion of public belief in climate change, the folks at Fox News and other right-wing media outlets can surely claim some of the credit. Glenn Beck would have been proud when, last week, I heard a girl in the Sadler Center vehemently attack the idea of climate change: “Global warming, my ass. It’s nothing but a hoax!”

While any claim that has the potential to disrupt people’s lives and cost taxpayers billions of dollars — as climate change does — should be viewed with healthy skepticism, the evidence of climate change is unequivocal. The past decade was the warmest on record, and scientists can point to a clear warming trend over the past one hundred years. Most of the world’s glaciers are melting, its seas are warming and ice caps are disappearing. The problem is real, regardless of what right-wing blowhards suggest. What will we do about it?

That may take some time to answer, but for now I’ll be heading back to northern Virginia to help my parents shovel the house out from its ice cave.

E-mail Beau Wright at fbwright@wm.edu.

Censorship never the answer to racism

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Anonymous comments have pushed the relationship between Virginia Tech’s student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, and the university to the breaking point. Recently, there have been hateful and racist comments on an announcement about a diversity summit that focused on the Asian community. The comments were directed toward the South Korean student responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre and the Chinese student responsible for beheading another Chinese student on campus. Virginia Tech’s Commission on Student Affairs wants to terminate its contract with the non-profit company that oversees its student media. The university has also threatened to block advertising for the paper. According to Sarah Mitchell, editor-in-chief of the Collegiate Times, “the disagreement no longer is an issue about anonymous postings. It is about the university trying to control our content.” If this is true then Virginia Tech is committing a gross violation of the Collegiate Times’s first amendment right to freedom of the press.

The announcement about the diversity summit drew a great deal of outrageous comments. Some were removed by Collegiate Times editors, but many were left on the website. Tech’s administration feels that these comments should not be anonymous and that people that wish to comment should be forced to register or submit signed letters to the editor for print, or both. This policy is ridiculous. Most collegiate and professional newspaper websites allow for anonymous online postings similar to those Tech has received.

Also, like Tech, editors at other collegiate and professional newspapers delete comments that are outrageous and do not belong in public forum. The newspapers at the College of William and Mary, Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Virginia all have policies similar to those of Tech.

Tech should not end its contract with the non-profit company, Educational Media Company. It would only hurt other student media operations at Tech. The Collegiate Times receives most of its funding from ad revenues placed. Terminating the contract, which amounts to $70,000 a year, would hurt the yearbook, literary magazine, and student radio and student television more than the newspaper. Tech is also considering blocking advertising from the Collegiate Times, which, in itself, would be unconstitutional. The university can pull its funding of the paper if it does not like its policies, but it cannot prohibit others from placing ads in the paper. Tech is clearly bullying the Collegiate Times into policies that would lead to censorship of the paper and is attempting to control the paper’s revenue sources outside of the university.

It is not a student newspaper’s fault that people unaffiliated with the newspaper leave racist and malicious comments. The Collegiate Times does the best job it can in deleting offensive comments, but ultimately it cannot censor everything people say. These comments were malicious, racist and hateful — I am not condoning them. However, maybe instead of Tech trying to censor the newspaper the university should spend more of its time attacking the more serious problem of its student’s attitudes toward different ethnic groups. The university should start putting a real effort into developing diversity and teaching students about different cultures on campus instead of trying to bully and censor its student newspaper in an effort to cover up the true feelings of some of its students.

E-mail Ben Arancibia at bcarancibia@wm.edu.

Women’s Basketball: College falls to Towson in final minute 63-60

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Once again the game came down to the final minutes for William and Mary. Once again the Tribe had a chance to get themselves over the proverbial hump. Once again they failed to do so.

The storylines are becoming frustratingly predictable for the College (11-13, 4-9 CAA) as they fell 63-60 to Towson Sunday at Kaplan Arena.

Sophomore guard Katherine DeHenzel had a chance to tie the game on a three-pointer from the left wing at the buzzer, but the shot sailed wide. Afterward, Head Coach Debbie Taylor would say DeHenzel’s shot was the one she wanted. It was the play earlier that had her upset.

“I was happy with her shot, I was unhappy about the play before that when we didn’t execute,” Taylor said. “We set a play up and we had a player decide to do what she wanted to do and it was a total melt down.”

The Tribe opened the game on a 19-10 run, with sophomore guard Taysha Pye scoring nine of her game-high 25 points in the first nine minutes of the ball game. Towson would respond by pounding the College on the offensive glass.

The Tribe quickly fell behind in the second half, trailing 60-49 with five minutes left to play. But a pair of threes from DeHenzel and Pye and a layup from senior forward Tiffany Benson would make it a two point game with 1:36 remaining.

After forcing a Towson turnover, Taylor called timeout with 39 seconds remaining to set up what she hoped would be a final play.

“We were trying to run a wing isolation for Taysha because she was having a hard time getting off the top when we ran the down screen and attack to the basket. She didn’t get that so we were going to run one where Janine [Aldridge] comes off the screens and gets open like she had been doing all night, reverse the ball to the high post and swing it to her on the wing,” Taylor said. “But it didn’t get Janine where she needed to be and they picked up their defense and denied the pass. It was a total meltdown, which we’ve had a couple times.”

Towson deflected the rebound out of bounds, giving the Tribe another possession with seven seconds on the shot clock. The inbound pass went to Pye, who was fouled on a layup attempt. The sophomore hit one of two free throws to cut Towson’s lead to one.

Towson’s Baker-Brice was fouled on the other end and hit both her free throws, forcing DeHenzel to attempt a three-pointer at the buzzer.

“I thought the first 10s minutes and the last five minutes, we played hard,” Taylor said. “And just somewhere in the middle, we kind of floundered.”

For a box score, click here.

Lacrosse: Zulty’s goal upsets no. 16 Buckeyes in opener

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William and Mary’s goal for the first few weeks of the 2010 season is simple. Head Coach Christine Halfpenny and her squad want to cement their status as national contenders by defeating several powerhouse programs over the course of a formidable non-conference schedule. On Saturday, the no. 20 Tribe took the first step, downing no. 16 Ohio State 15-14 in a captivating season opener at Busch Field.

With 4:33 remaining in the game, senior midfielder Mary Zulty slipped past the Buckeye defense and supplied the Tribe with the decisive, game winning score. The College withstood several Ohio State runs in the final minutes to preserve the one-point victory.

“I’m just extremely proud of our team today,” Halfpenny said. “A couple of things they really impressed me with was their discipline, their determination and their willingness to stick to the game plan. Our on-field leadership was outstanding; there was not one second during the game that our kids didn’t think that they weren’t going to win. They had the right mindset and the right attitude.”

After falling behind by three goals in the first half, the College persevered and rallied to cut Ohio State’s halftime lead to one. After the intermission, the Tribe scored five straight goals to open a three-goal advantage over the visiting Buckeyes.

Throughout the course of the match, the College displayed a balanced scoring attack, with six different players contributing on the offensive end.

“That’s been a part of the offense that we put in place,” Halfpenny said. “Over the last three years we have been working to develop a balanced attacking unit where we have two people that are hot one day, and three people that are hot the other day. We have seven legitimate scoring threats every time on the attack, and they go deep; they come off the bench and they are still scoring threats.”

Zulty was the Tribe’s leading scorer with four goals and junior midfielders Grace Golden and Molly Wannen added three goals each. Attackers Maggie Anderson and Krystin Mackrides scored two goals apiece, while junior attacker Ashley Holofcener scored one goal.

The squad also displayed a gritty determination on the defensive end in the latter stages of the game. The Buckeyes managed to knot the score at 14 on the strength of a Maghan Beaudrault goal with 5:35 remaining, but the combination of the Tribe’s tough defense coupled with Zulty’s clinching score proved too much for Ohio State to handle.

“It speaks volumes for our team’s discipline and our ability to take it one play at a time,” Halfpenny said. “It’s a long game, and if you get caught up in what just happened, you’re not going to be able to stay focused and organized.”

Despite the win, the Tribe is not yet content. Several other large non-conference challenges loom, beginning with a match against no. 5 Duke at home this Sunday.

“It gives us a ton of confidence,” Golden said. “We know we still have to work for each game and each game is a new game, but it is nice to start off on the winning foot. This week, we are going to work hard. We are going to prepare like we did today and we are going to go out as a team and play against Duke the same way we just did against Ohio State.”

For a box score, click here.

Men’s basketball: Brown rescues Tribe with late jumper

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For about 50 seconds during the Tribe’s 53-52 win Saturday night, Kendrix Brown was feeling pretty awful. The sophomore guard had just committed a pair of cardinal sins that allowed visiting Northeastern to turn a 16-point Tribe lead to into a one-point Husky advantage in the final minute. But shortly after his dual mistakes — turning the ball over on a five-second violation and fouling Baptiste Bataille on a three-point attempt — he got a chance to redeem himself.

With the College trailing for the first time all night, Brown corralled a missed shot by senior guard David Schneider, calmly collected himself, and banked home a game-winning fadeaway jumper with 3.8 seconds left. Afterward, the visitors missed a final valuable upset over the CAA’s first-place team.

“I would have felt horrible if we had lost,” Brown said. “But we have a very resilient team, and we always pull through in the clutch.”

The Tribe needed every ounce of that resilience Saturday. The squad dominated Northeastern for the first 37 minutes of action, maintaining a sizeable lead for much of the contest. But a furious 15-4 Husky run in the final three minutes erased the Tribe’s advantage, leading to the dramatic ending.

“I think it was just our effort,” Brown said. “We came out with a lot of energy and we lagged off in the second half. We didn’t contest every shot; we weren’t communicating as much. We let them back in the game when we should have been able to put it away.”

Until that point, it looked as if the College would emerge with a relatively comfortable home victory. Schneider and senior forward Danny Sumner each drained long three-pointers in the opening minutes as the Tribe quickly opened up a 10-4 lead that would grow to 12 points by halftime. Head Coach Tony Shaver devised a defensive gameplan that stifled Northeastern’s guard-oriented offense, thwarting the attempts of guards Matt Janning and Chaisson Allen to get open for outside shots.

“We came in knowing that they were basically the engine that made the team go,” Brown said. “If we made their other players take shots, we knew we’d have a good chance of winning.”

That strategy contained the Huskies to just 16 first-half points on six of 23 shooting. Meanwhile, the Tribe controlled the boards, limiting the second-chance points that had plagued them in recent games. Junior center Marcus Kitts racked up 10 rebounds, while helping his squad to a 38-28 advantage on the night.

Coupled with steady scoring from Schneider (10 points) and Sumner (12), the College opened up a 40-24 lead with 9:16 remaining in the second half.

But then the visitors came roaring back.

“It wasn’t our defense, we were okay there,” Shaver said. “But we got a little passive on the offensive end. Instead of playing to win, we played a little fearful of losing at that point.”

Janning and Allen got hot despite the Tribe’s defensive pressure, supplying 13 points over the final nine minutes. The College still maintained a six point lead in the final minute, but several ill-timed fouls and Brown’s struggles allowed the Huskies to take their first and only lead of the night with 23 seconds left.

Twenty seconds later, Brown’s jumper dropped through the iron, sending a raucous home crowd into hysterics and delivering the Tribe a crucial win in a tightly-contested CAA race.

James Madison’s home win over Virginia Commonwealth moved the College a game clear of the Rams and tied with Drexel for fourth place. Due to CAA tiebreaking rules, the Tribe now controls its own destiny towards maintaining that position and earning one of the conference’s four first-round tournament byes.

The win was also the College’s third straight, and fourth in five games after dropping four of five last month.

“It’s huge,” Shaver said. “When we lost two or three to some good teams in our league, people wanted to know what’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong. We’ve had some bumps in the road and we’ve responded to them. It was a tremendous win for us.”

The squad now prepares to face third-place George Mason Tuesday in Fairfax, Va. With Drexel and VCU facing each other and a weak schedule remaining for the Tribe, a win could go a long way toward clinching a top-four finish.

“It’s a quick turnaround, but handling this turnaround will be a lot easier with a win,” Shaver said. “We’re a hard team to prepare for, so it may hurt [George Mason].”

For a box score, click here.

Men’s basketball: The French connection

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The pickup basketball game is a staple of the summers of American childhood. Call up a bunch of neighborhood friends, head down to the blacktop, and play until it gets dark. For today’s young people, the matchups are where friendships are formed, skills are honed and rivalries are hewed.

But rarely do such games have quite the impact that it had for a pair of former College players.

Adam Payton ’07 grew up in Burlington, N.J. Zeb Cope ’04 spent summers visiting his grandmother and honing his skills on the same Burlington court frequented by Payton. One summer day in 2004, Payton, who had just finished his sophomore basketball campaign at Vanderbilt, challenged Cope, a recent William and Mary graduate, to a game. Cope won, but the two started talking and a friendship that has lasted across six years and six time zones was formed.

The pair was pitted against each other again last Tuesday night, but this time, the surrounding scenery couldn’t have been more different. The Eiffel Tower and the picturesque streets of Paris served as the backdrop, a further evolution in a basketball journey that has taken the two friends from New Jersey to Williamsburg to the raucous arenas of Europe.

In the red and white of Lille Métropole, Payton stands as an elusive and poised 6’3” point guard. He has the size warranted to be a superior player at the position, while nightly showcasing the athletic ability to split defenders and drop in a silky jumper on French courts. It was moves similar to those—coupled with that dead-on jump shot—that established him as the subject of deep interest from major conference schools as a senior at New Jersey’s Lawrenceville High School, leading to a scholarship at SEC-program Vanderbilt.

But Payton endured a rocky two seasons for the Commodores, averaging 1.8 points in only 8 minutes per game. By the time he ran into Cope in Burlington, a transfer out of Vanderbilt was looming in the back of his mind. His newfound friend encouraged him to take a visit to Williamsburg, and after sitting down with Head Coach Tony Shaver, Payton packed his bags and transferred to the College.

Cope was an unlikely recruiter for the Tribe program, and a summer earlier he probably would not have had much impact on Payton. Entering his senior season, he had been misused by former Head Coach Rick Boyages, relegated to the post where he struggled to find steady minutes and was discouraged from shooting. But, the summer before Cope met Payton, Shaver arrived in the picture, and Cope found his niche with him.

“We had a rebuilding team, a young team,” Cope said, “Before Coach Shaver, I had taken two or three threes my entire collegiate career. Then Coach Shaver came and was like, ‘Shoot the ball!’”

Moved to small forward, the 6’8”, 240-pound Cope thrived. After his breakout senior season, he signed with the former agent of Tribe Assistant Coach Ted Jeffries and was picked up by a Spanish team in Calpe.

Payton, meanwhile, had professional aspirations of his own. Coming to Williamsburg, he found instant success on the court in Kaplan Arena, averaging 10.4 points and 1.8 assists over his junior and senior seasons. He was named Third Team All-CAA as a senior, and set his mind on the NBA after graduation.

But the pinnacle of the basketball world was not interested, and Payton found himself in Europe as well. After selecting Cope’s agent, Jim Clibanoff, Payton signed with a Swiss squad and played well enough in his first year to earn a transfer up to Lille. A year and a half later, he’s still there.

“For me, as long as I had a basketball and a court, I was OK,” Payton said. “Any frustration I had I could release on the basketball court.”

Cope dons the green and white of JSF Nanterre with yellow Nikes for added emphasis. He dazzles the foreign audience with a game complete both in the paint and out. On this night, he notches a game-high 18 points, nine from beyond-the-arc.

Cope’s path to France was not quite as smooth as his former teammate’s. He left his initial Spanish team due to a lack of playing time just two months into the season, only to be let go after a six-week tryout with a Swiss squad.

“My first year I was basically cut twice,” he said.

He rebounded from the early adversity to sign with a program in Switzerland’s top league, where he won back-to-back championships and received consecutive MVP awards. Suddenly finding himself in demand, he competed in the French Pro A league for three seasons before moving to the French Pro B league, where Payton had found a steady home, this past fall. It might be the second-best league in France, but the league is still viewed as one of the top 10 in Europe, and is littered with past and future NBA prospects. Payton hopes to be in the latter category.

“If I can reach my potential, I will be good enough to play in the NBA,” Payton said. “Whether I get a look or not, that is another story. There are a lot of guys over here who are good enough … and there are a lot of guys over here that have played in the NBA.”

For Cope, the NBA was once a consideration that has since ceased to be his sole aspiration.

“Anybody that does anything wants to do it at the highest level they can do it,” Cope said. “The NBA is, of course, regarded as the highest level of professional basketball. I understand having the goal, but at the same time, appreciate where you are. I get paid well; I am here in Paris … If it is going to happen, it is going to happen.”

And there are benefits to playing outside of the intense media glare in the United States. Cope and Payton especially value the camaraderie of teammates from all over the globe and the experience of playing European professional basketball.

The future, much like the past, looks to hold similar paths for the duo. Cope, wrapping up his sixth season in Europe, is in his final year before returning to the United States to pursue a medical or post baccalaureate degree. He wants to be an orthopedic surgeon.

“When I was five years old, I wanted to be a doctor, way before I ever decided I wanted to play pro basketball,” Cope said. “Basketball has provided me with amazing experiences … but I have been working towards returning to school as well … I am going to miss this, but I am ready as anybody can be to make the change.”

Payton aims to obtain a doctorate in child psychology after his playing days. How long those playing days will last remains uncertain.

“As long as I can play, I will,” Payton said. “If I find a good position and it’s a good environment for my wife and son, I’m going to keep playing.”

But for a night in the Parisian suburb, it was not about the future – it was about the present.

With five minutes remaining, Cope set a stiff pick on Payton, who emerged from the block with a grin only a true friend could pull off.

“I remember when I was at William and Mary, they told me a story that Zeb knocked some guy out,” Payton said. “So when I turned my head, I saw Zeb right there and that memory flashed into my head. I had to stop real quick because I didn’t want to be laid out on the court, unconscious.”

Six years after their matchup on that Burlington court, the same result held. Cope’s Nanterre squad handily trounced Payton’s Lille squad after Cope ripped off 12 straight points during the third quarter to build a decisive lead.

Cope and Payton will not meet again during the regular season this year, with the playoffs being the last chance for a final showdown. With Cope aiming to return to school next fall, it is conceivable the two took the court opposite each other for the last time Tuesday night. But, if history is any indication, they will meet again.

The solution to gender-neutral housing

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The Flat Hat has been the College of William and Mary's student newspaper since 1911. It covers the College and the surrounding area of Williamsburg, VA, printing on Tuesdays of the academic year.

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© 1911-Present. The Flat Hat. All Rights Reserved.