A Road Well Traveled

While Israeli point guard Marisa Gobuty played for her dream of a college basketball scholarship in a foreign land, war erupted back home.

PHOTOS BY GLENN NELSON UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

Imagine traveling a great distance to play for a team on which all your teammates initially will be strangers, the thousands of miles traveled amplifying the usual female fret about fitting in. Now locate your new team in a foreign country. Scary enough yet? Add living in hotels for five straight weeks - with your parents, sister and grandparents. Make that team one of the most star-studded in the country. Then, for good measure, have your already security challenged country plunge into conflict with a neighbor, the warfare gripping headlines around the world and continuing when you return.

Welcome to Marisa Gobuty's American Vacation, 2006. Count among the Israeli point guard's souvenirs the broken nose she suffered during her second event with Finest Basketball Club (FBC) in Riverside, Calif. Add to Gobuty's degree of difficulty the broken finger she suffered during the semifinals of Israel's State Cup, where her team, Elitzur Holon, claimed the championship.

"Tough kid," says her father, Marshall Gobuty.

"Tough" also would describe the road she's facing, never mind the one she just traveled. Though Gobuty showed off a funky (as in Nassau) perimeter game with plenty of court vision, shot-making and shake in her dribble moves during her July tour of the U.S., it was, alas, just a month. Most of her American competition angling for the same Division I scholarship she desires have been showing their wares for three straight years.

Moreover, a scholarship to play college basketball not only would fulfill a dream, it would earn Gobuty a deferrment from military service, a requirement of all Israeli citizens upon reaching the age of 18. Gobuty says she wants to serve. Still, Israel's conflict with the Hezbollah in Lebanon, which erupted on July 12, about halfway through Gobuty's tournament schedule, was a disquieting reminder of the real - some would say likely - consequences of living in a state of constant military readiness.

Marisa Gobuty attacks the rim with abandon
if given opportunities

"We felt very down and depressed as we got home," says Marshall Gobuty, principal of Lagoinvest, an international real estate investment group. "We were in the U.S. at a tournament and, really, we flew home and missed the tournament because we had this compelling feeling that we should be there. ... We felt we needed to be back in Israel to show support. It was a difficult time. Who would imagine that less than an hour to two hours away from our house there were 200 bombs falling each day! The soldiers that were captured were just kids, just regular people - the plumber, the dentist, the friends you have. Israel is a reservist army for the most part, so life is intertwined with the conflict. However at the same time people in Tel Aviv were on the beach! Pretty surreal."

Marisa Gobuty says, "We left the U.S. earlier this summer to head home during the war because we all felt a sense of wanting to be there. My grandmother who lives in California was really upset, but we all felt it was something we had to do. I don’t think my father would have allowed us to go, if it wasn’t safe. On the other hand, where in the world is safe? If you drive into a bad area of New York City or Los Angeles and you find yourself in a bad situation, how safe are you? My father says that at least in Israel we know who our enemies are. "

It is one thing, at least, on which the peripatetic Gobuty can be clear. Born in Toronto, she moved with her family to Encino, Calif., when she was seven, then two years later to Herzalyia, which is near Tel Aviv. As such, she carries three passports - from Canada, the U.S. and Israel. The past couple years, Gobuty has been splitting her year between Israel and the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where she carries a 4.22 gpa at the Pendelton School and has been a star athlete in IMG's renowned multisport training institute whose alumni include some of the best and brightest in the NBA, pro tennis and other sports.

Last spring, Gobuty caught the eye of Ray Mayes, the national director of FBC, an adidas-supported, national network of club teams, at a prep event in which Pendleton was competing. Mayes offered her a spot on the FBC Blue team, which is his top squad, based out of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. The Gobuty family, knowing next to nothing about the select-team and viewing system in the U.S., accepted and made arrangements.

"She was a really smart kid," Mayes says. "She had kind of a strange shot, but the thing went in. So she was hitting shots, controllling everything. And you can always use a kid with a high basketball IQ."

One thing that Gobuty had imported to Israel from the U.S. was a love for the game of basketball, honed in San Fernando Valley youth leagues. The Israeli system added focus and intelligence to that love. "She is the quintessential Israeli point guard," her father says. "Since there are not many big players in Israel, most of the focus is on playmaking and seeing the court. That’s what they teach over and over - big focus on basics." Gobuty is in fact the starting point guard on the Israeli national youth team. During the summer of 2005, she quarterbacked Israel in the FIBA U16 European Championships in Tallin, Estonia. She scored 18 points against the Slovak Republic and another nine during Israel's last game, a 60-56 victory over Latvia, and held the tournament's leading scorer, Lelina Babkiva, to just four points, 14 under her average.

Marisa Gobuty is adept at change of speed
and direction

In Gobuty's flip-flopped world, it probably is no surprise that the following summer - this past summer - she found herself going from lead dog to part of the pack, on a team loaded with guards, including Pasadena's Nikki Speed, who could be the best in the Class of 2008. Moreover, she was a latecomer to the team, already injured, further injured and a foreigner to boot. Not to mention the advent of war in her home country. Mayes found her to be resilient and shockingly hard working. "I'd tell her father that all the stuff she is playing through, that's too much for me," he says. Mayes calls Gobuty "the hardest worker out there, the kind of kid who will cry if you turn the gym lights out."

Playing through the pain, sloshing through all the unknowns and buying into the it-could-be-anyone's-game philosophy of FBC, Gobuty eventually was able to contribute and "do great things," according to Mayes. FBC won the most prestigious title on the adidas summer circuit, the Tournament of Champions in Suwanee, Ga., and Gobuty played at the adidas Top Ten All-American Camp, then earned a berth on the rising stars all-star team at the EA Sports National Camp in Las Vegas. In between events and seemingly between breaths, Gobuty also managed to work out with her old personal training, Joe Abunassar, the personal coach for the likes of NBA stars Kevin Garnett and Chauncey Billups, who'd opened Abunassar Impact Basketball (AIB), a new training facility in Carson, Calif.

"I was lucky enough to play on FBC Blue, which was an amazing team," Gobuty says. "In Europe I did play against girls from Russia and Slovenia that were very good, fast and athletic. However, the girls on my (FBC) team were really amazing. Some of them are younger than I am I can only imagine how good they will be. Ray Mayes, our coach, was great in working me into the lineup; I know most of the girls have been on the team for years, so it was kind of strange that I came to the team so late. The girls were good about it. They knew I came from Israel and that this was my chance to have U.S. colleges see me play. I was nervous, (but) once I focused on basketball instead of seeing rows of scouts lined up I was able to show them what I was capable of and I feel fortunate to be able to help the team win when the coach asked me to step in."

Gobuty's American Vacation, if you can call it that, has earned her serious looks from Syracuse, several mid-major programs on the West Coast, as well as several Ivy League schools. She has had her heart set on playing for a major Division I program in the East. Whether that will happen will depend on how all the various forces play out.

One thing Gobuty counts on is basketball and Israel being part of her life for some time to come. When her family first went to Israel, it was expected to be an extended vacation. After a year, they voted during a family meeting to stay. Gobuty knew when she cast her vote that it meant military service. She says she gladly will serve after playing out her four years in the U.S. Women, she points out, are not assigned to active combat duty and, furthermore, national-team athletes are assigned situations that enable them to continuing playing.

"I love life in Israel," Gobuty says. "it's not like you see on CNN. It's not all wars and fighting. The country is beautiful and the people are great - tough but great. Plus, women's basketball is very popular and taken seriously. ... I think of myself as American-Israeli. I think it’s a good combination."

In her typically headlong, fearless and tireless fashion, Marisa Gobuty, it seems, has made it work for her.

Marisa Gobuty celebrates a State Cup championship

Marisa Gobuty during semifinal action with Elitzur Holon

(Photos by Liat Paer, courtesty Marshall Gobuty)

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