#BackToSchool. Polonara reminisces about his school days 0

Zalgiris Kaunas’ social project “Zalgiris – in your school” has reached the finishing line of the season. On this occasion, Zalgiris TV presenter Egle Jurgaityte put Achille Polonara in the interviewer’s chair and reminisced about his school days.

Born and raised in Ancona, Polonara moved to Teramo as a teenager, where he played at the local basketball academy and laid the foundations for his future professional career.

“When I was 15, I moved to another city, so I changed schools. New classmates came along. There were other basketball players who moved to another city with me. We went to school together and practically stayed together all day long. We lived together, went to school together and played basketball together,” said the Zalgiris player.

Growing up away from his parents and hometown friends, the forward said, meant that he had to fully immerse himself in the life of a near-professional basketball player while still a teenager, which often meant that his studies suffered. However, Polonara said that even if he missed some classes, he tried to keep up with his work.

“Many times we would meet before breakfast and decide that we would not go to school today because we had not studied. Anyway, I was a pretty serious guy. I wasn’t a model student, but I did my best to do my work, – the Italian explained. – I was a pretty good student. Yes, I played basketball, so I just wasn’t ready for the tests sometimes. Anyway, that was normal, because when I needed to learn something for a report, I needed to play basketball. And I played a lot. The teachers knew about it and helped me a lot.”

Asked by Jurgaityte about the Italian gesture of folding the fingers in a pile, Polonara explained its meaning and admitted that sometimes his teachers showed him this gesture too.

“This gesture can have many meanings, but I think the main one is ‘what are you doing’? If you are doing something strange, for example, in Italy we show this gesture because we might think that what you are saying or doing is very strange”, smiled the player.

Polonara also answered a whole bunch of questions from the “Zalgiris – in your school” project participants.

This season, pupils from as many as 43 schools took part in the “Zalgiris – in your school” campaign. The young fans from Kaunas Juozo Grusas Art Gymnasium were the most numerous at Zalgiris Arena and will receive the main prize – a visit of Zalgiris to their school.