Excerpt from "Playing the Enemy"

Sports and politics are often a good mix. John Carlin shows how this is true in his nonfiction account of "Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation."

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 7 Unit 3's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: Tangerine, A stunning tale of escape, To an Athlete Dying Young, Biography of Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, Landmarks of Nelson Mandela's Life, Invictus, Playing the Enemy, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. Afrikaner
    a white native of Cape Province who is a descendant of Dutch settlers and who speaks Afrikaans
    Both being Afrikaners, they immediately started engaging him animatedly on rugby.
  2. imposing
    impressive in appearance
    The policemen dropped him off at a small waiting room, bare save for a table and some leather chairs, into which stepped Mandela's personal assistant, a tall imposing black lady called Mary Mxadana who asked him to take a seat and wait a moment.
  3. register
    be aware of
    Pienaar looked around the large wood-paneled office, vaguely registering a blend of decor old South African and new
  4. objective
    the goal intended to be attained
    Pienaar would not have guessed it at the time, but winning him over--and through him, enlisting the rest of the Springbok team--was an important objective for Mandela.
  5. unification
    the state of being joined or linked
    For what Mandela had reckoned, in that half instinctive, half calculating way of his, was that the World Cup might prove helpful in the great challenge of national unification that still lay ahead.
  6. overt
    open and observable; not secret or hidden
    Mandela never made his purpose overt in that first meeting with Pienaar, but he did edge closer to the main theme when he switched the conversation to his memories of the Barcelona Olympic Games
  7. reverberate
    ring or echo with sound
    He talked about the power that sport had to move people and how he had seen this not long ago after his release in the Barcelona Olympics, which he especially remembered for one particular moment when he said he stood up and he felt the whole stadium reverberating
  8. rugby
    a team sport in which players try to advance an oval-shaped ball
    Francois Pienaar was the captain of rugby and if I wanted to use rugby, I had to work with him
  9. compliment
    express respect or esteem for
    I concentrated in our meeting on complimenting him for the role which he was playing and which he could play.
  10. perception
    a way of conceiving something
    The time had come, as Mandela explained to his guest, to abandon the old perception of the Springbok rugby team as "enemies"
  11. compatriot
    a person from your own country
    and see them as compatriots and friends
  12. stability
    a constant order, especially of society
    Let us use sport for the purpose of nation-building and promoting all the ideas which we think will lead to peace and stability in our country
  13. impact
    a forceful consequence; a strong effect
    Du Plessis (the Springbok team manager) had begun to see just how enormous the impact of this "One Team, One Country" business was, not only in terms of the good it would do the country, but the good it would do the team.
  14. factor
    anything that contributes causally to a result
    There was a cause-and-effect connection between the Mandela factor and our performance in the field
  15. captivity
    the state of being imprisoned
    but first the players took turns viewing the cell where Mandela had spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years in captivity.
  16. oblige
    force somebody to do something
    After Mandela's cell the Springbok players went outside to the yard where Mandela had once been obliged to break stones.
  17. represent
    be a delegate or spokesperson for
    I spoke to them about our sense that we were representing the whole country now, them included, and then they sang us a song.
  18. enrapture
    hold spellbound
    And there was the crowd again--"Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!"--enraptured, as Mandela appeared at the touchline, smiling from ear to ear, waving to the crowd, as he prepared to walk toward a little podium that had been placed on the field where he would hand the world cup trophy to Francois Pienaar.
  19. anoint
    choose by or as if by divine intervention
    The gods at that moment were Mandela and Pienaar, the old man in green, crowned king of all South Africa, handing the cup to Pienaar, the young man in green, anointed that day as the spiritual head of born-again Afrikanerdom.
  20. veteran
    an experienced person who has given long service
    It was all too much for the tough-minded Slabbert, hard-nosed veteran of a thousand political battles.
Created on Thu Sep 11 16:02:38 EDT 2014 (updated Thu Sep 11 18:07:45 EDT 2014)

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