The Foreign Service Journal, December 2021

108 DECEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Beatrice Camp retired in 2015 from a Foreign Service career that took her to China, Thailand, Sweden and Hungary, in addition to assignments at the department and at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. She is the editor of American Diplomacy Journal . The opinions and characteriza- tions in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government. N o one imag- ined—not the Hungarians, and certainly not the Americans—that a little-known Hungarian basketball team could beat the vaunted U.S. women’s squad that had swept the 1996 Olympics. Embassy Budapest was excited to learn that we would host the U.S. Women’s Basketball 1996 Olympic gold medalists in February 1999 on their winter Euro- pean tour. The U.S. team had compiled a 52-0 exhibition record during its pre- Olympic competition and then won all eight Olympic games to finish with a 60-0 record. More popular than any previous women’s basketball team, Team USA drew a record 202,556 fans during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. And now Olympic champions Lisa Leslie, Ruthie Bolton, Sheryl Swoopes, Teresa Edwards, Dawn Staley and Katrina McClain would play an exhibitionmatch in Budapest against the local Ferencvárosi Torna Club team, with a pre-match friendship game between Parliament and the U.S. embassy. Sports diplomacy at its finest, we thought. An Upset in Budapest BY BEATR I CE CAMP Basketball has a long and distin- guished history in Hungary. Physical education teacher Géza Kuncze intro- duced basketball (korbball) in Hungary in 1912, after he first saw it in Germany. The game proved popular in schools, and Hungary’s national team frequently did well in European competitions. More than eight decades later, Géza’s grandson, Deputy Prime Minister Gábor Kuncze, was the stimulus for the match between Hungarian parliamentarians and U.S. embassy staff that was to pre- cede the top ticket. The embassy hoopsters included Deputy Chief of Mission Tom Robert- son, Public Affairs Officer Bill Morgan, Consul General Teddy Taylor and Defense Attaché Jon Martinson. Team uniforms were procured at an Air Force base used by the Stabiliza- tion Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a NATO-led multinational peacekeep- ing force deployed after the Bosnian war. Our public affairs section worked closely with U.S. team coach Nell Fortner and managers to support what we saw as a terrific exchange program. Both teams hobnobbed at a reception hosted by the DCM the night before the game. The Hungarians were wonderful hosts in turn; on game day, they provided a fabulous feast of prime national delica- cies, including goose liver pâté. With most embassy staff eager to cheer for the U.S. from the stands, my husband and I were designated to sit in the official box, presided over by Agricul- ture Minister József Torgyán. We did our best to cheer diplomatically. During the pre-match, the embassy managed to hold off the parliamentar- ians, with considerable help from an Air Force master sergeant augmenting the contingent of diplomats. The main bill did not go as well. Although we all considered Team USA invincible, the Hungarian club team, Ferencváros, managed the unthinkable, beating Lisa Leslie and her superstar squad, 73-70. A stunned Ferencváros manager admitted she expected to be trounced, saying she would have been REFLECTIONS An official photo of the 1996 U.S. women’s senior national team. USABASKETBALL