Former President of the United States of America, Barack Obama’s love for basketball is quite known. Obama loves the sport and had even coached his daughter Sasha Obama and her basketball team for a short period of time. However, he was forced to quit after other parents from the competing teams complained. Obama recalled this story, and many others, in his new memoir, A Promised Land.
A new excerpt about coaching from the memoir was released by The Sunday Times. It mentions that while in office, Obama coached the fourth-grade team that their youngest daughter Sasha played in. While the former president at first only attended her games while at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, after observing a couple of games, he and his personal aide Reggie Love decided to train a bunch of fourth-grader basketball players.
However, parents from the opposing teams objected to it, and complained that he wasn’t offering training sessions to their kids, too. “We explained that there was nothing special about our practices. That it was just an excuse for me to spend extra time with Sasha. And we offered to help other parents organize practices of their own,” wrote Obama.
Barack Obama was then forced to quit coaching his daughter’s basketball team, and he wrote that Reggie would tease him saying, “They must think being coached by you is something they can put on their Harvard application." ALSO READ: Former US President Barack Obama Pens About His Fascination With India; Says He Spent Childhood Listening To Ramayana And Mahabharata
My memoir, A Promised Land, is out today. I hope you’ll read it. My goal was to give you some insight into the events and people that shaped me during the early years of my presidency. Most of all, I hope it inspires you to see yourself playing a role in shaping a better world. pic.twitter.com/hdZysCpCN9
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 17, 2020
Image Source: Twitter/mallikasherawat