Coach

I got to visit with a lot of people back home during my week there, including Coach S., who I hadn’t seen in at least five years. When I knew him, he was a high school counselor and girls’ basketball coach; now he works for the district as a diagnostician. He and I spent over an hour catching up. 

When I was 14, I made the varsity basketball team at the small school I attended and proceeded to have an awful time. I was the only freshman on the team and the older girls were ruthless. School in general was hard that year and, for a combination of reasons, I knew by mid-spring that I would not be returning for sophomore year and would instead be going to the high school for our address. 

I met Coach S. when my parents and I attended a registration session at my new high school in the spring of freshman year. He led the meeting and gave the group a tour of the school. 

As a sophomore, I tried out for basketball and made the C-team. It was a wonderful season and a great first year at the new school. I was used to being abused at basketball; now I had a new group of friends. We had an undefeated season under the guidance of Coach S. 

It wasn’t all cake, though. Athletes did weekly grade checks so coaches always knew what was going on in the classroom. When I was being disruptive and argumentative in my history class, he made me explain the situation to the whole team. He told me he would always side with the teacher. When I had some C’s, my GPA still easily high enough to stay eligible, he was not shy about expressing his disappointment. 

One time I came to practice after having eaten a bunch of gummies, which made me feel sick and I was not giving much effort. Furious, he punted a basketball across the gym. I also got kicked out of practice one time; I can’t remember if it was the same day as the punting. During one of our games, I got subbed out of the game and, annoyed, didn’t high five Coach’s outstretched hand as I passed him to sit on the bench. Because of that, I didn’t go in for the rest of the game. Coach S. demanded excellence and wasn’t going to take my crap. 

The policy was that only freshmen and sophomores could play on C-team; juniors had to make JV or varsity and seniors had to make varsity. So my big goal between March and November was to avoid getting cut. I went to open gyms, shot baskets from designated spots and recorded it in a log during the summer, and did a lot of running. 

Coach S. ran some preseason sessions and mostly freshmen attended, plus another junior and me who had been on his C-team as sophomores. During one of these sessions, he was explaining to the freshmen something about the importance of respect and correct behavior in the basketball program. By then I had shaped up enough that I wasn’t getting in trouble in class nor getting kicked out of practices, so he used me as an example, telling the group that he and I “had a coming to Jesus”. This was followed by some giggles, and he soon realized it was because I’m Jewish. He apologized, but I hadn’t been offended; I thought it was funny. 

Despite my hard work, I was cut from the program in November. I was devastated. I knew Coach S. was who I wanted to talk to about it, so I wrote my name on his sign up sheet and he called me out of class a few days later. I sat there and listened as he described the coaches deliberating about who to keep and who to cut. He told me something to the effect of they didn’t want to keep me on the team just to sit on the bench because they knew I would be unhappy with that. 

It was around this time that I decided I wanted to do stats for the JV team he would be coaching. Firstly, let me tell you who cares about the stats from high school JV girls’ basketball: nobody. Nonetheless, he took me seriously and said I needed to write a proposal of specifically what I wanted to do. I did, and we agreed on my job as JV Statistician. So I sat on his bench all season, probably distracting his players, probably missing at least a quarter of the rebounds, steals, and turnovers I was supposed to be tallying because I wasn’t paying attention, but feeling very much included in the basketball program. 

Growing up can be hard, even with involved and loving parents, which I had and have, and Coach S. is one of several teachers/school employees who made my journey a little better. Now that I’m a teacher myself, I hope to be to at least some of my students who these people were to me.