Yongsan Junior High Gets Basketball Sons

Pro basketball coaches Hur Jae (41, KCC) and Yi Ho-geun (41, ETLAND) will soon have something else in common besides their professions. Their sons will start playing basketball on the same junior high school team later this year.

Hur’s firstborn son, Ung, and Yi’s firstborn, Dong-yeop, will both attend Yongsan Junior High School and will play basketball together.

Ung and Dong-yeop, who will graduate from their elementary schools next month, joined Yongsan’s basketball team at the end of last year and attended the school’s training camp this week.

Ung started playing basketball as a hobby when he was staying in the U.S. two years ago. He inherited his father’s reflexes and is improving his techniques day by day. Not exceptionally tall at 168cm, his coaches think his shooting and penetration abilities are superb.

Yi Dong-yeop is taller at 174cm, and he has more experience since he started playing basketball in the second grade. He was named team MVP after leading his team to a championship with a scoring average of almost 30 points per game in two of last year’s national competitions.

The sons of the former basketball stars say that they feel the pressure of the family trees they fell from, but that they are still determined to become number one.

Jong-Seok Kim kjs0123@donga.com