The Unlikely Resurrection Of A Second-Grade Basketball Coach

I’ve been spending my Saturday afternoons this winter coaching basketball to seven second-grade girls. It’s both the most exasperating, patience-sucking couple of hours I spend every week and the most soul-enriching that I’m gifted. Generally, we get rolled each week by some team that’s been handpicked and stacked with girls so tall and athletic they could easily pass for fourth-graders. I really could care less about winning (we don’t keep score anyway), but I would like an even playing field so my team could experience more success. Our first game, not only didn’t we score, we only got four shots off total and none of them drew iron. Worse, I’m too competitive for my own good and always have been. So, some Saturdays leave me defeated, deflated, pissed off, and more on edge than I have the right to be. Thankfully, I have an eight-year-old daughter wise beyond her years who puts things in perspective on the drive home. (After-game snacks make everything better.)

Still, despite her beautiful perspective and the power of time and distance to ease any misery, as much as I love coaching and spreading my love for basketball to little kids just starting with the game, I’ve struggled to enjoy the process and experience this winter as much as I have during pretty much every other season. I’ve coached a lot of kids in a lot of sports for a lot of years, and almost without fail, every experience was wonderful. I’m positive I’ve lost far more games than won, but I always felt soothed by the notion that I was leaving the kids I coached better off than when we started. I’ve always felt sure we had fun and they learned something along the way.  

I wasn’t getting that feeling this year. For different reasons, life has been a bit of a confusing, frustrating mess of late, and my heart and mind just weren’t into the coaching gig to the extent they should have been. Some people look at coaching as something they have to do because no one else wants the job. Some people do it because their ego needs the power and attention. Some people, though, coach because they love passing on their passion and knowledge. I’ve always loved coaching because I love teaching. I love explaining. I love charting progress and success. I love seeing transformations taking place. I love seeing growth. I absolutely love getting outside of my own head and being part of something that isn’t about me. This year, though, I was just going through the motions. Not exactly faking it, but not exactly looking forward to Saturdays either. That really bothered me.

But as seems to happen if you’re willing to keep an open mind and recognize gifts when they’re presented, something unexpected parted the clouds a little and put things into a different, welcomed perspective. In a word, that unexpected something was a kid named Holli. Damn if this kid isn’t the best. Outside of basketball, I barely know Holli. Our paths have only really crossed on a basketball court. Other than a few hours on Saturday afternoons starting last year, Holli has been another girl that my daughter goes to school with. But man, if she hasn’t had a big impact that extends way beyond basketball.

I’m not sure that Holli even likes basketball. Lately, I’m pretty sure the more she plays, the less enamored she becomes. Much of that is due to Holli being deathly afraid of the ball. I mean really afraid, to the point that the second she believes someone is even thinking of passing her the ball, she throws her hands up to her face as if to ward off the attack of some lunatic coming her way. Then she physically turns her back to the ball and ducks. Sometimes, this results in the ball smacking her right in the face, which does little to ease her fear. The more she gets smacked, the less she wants to play. The less she wants to play, the more she asks me to sit on the bench. The more she asks to sit on the bench, the more badly I feel. The more badly I feel, the more I’ve wanted to say, “Screw it. I’m failing here, and I have enough going on. Time to move on. These kids are better off with another coach.”

That was until last week. Holli and her dad came to me before the game and said it was OK if Holli didn’t play much this week. They confirmed she was afraid of the ball and maybe this basketball stuff wasn’t cutting it. As always, Holli let me know all this with the biggest, brightest smile imaginable. With the type of enthusiasm I wish every kid possessed. And the truth is, Holli isn’t a bad player really. She executes most skills better than the other girls on the team. Her fear, though, holds her back. So while everyone else dribbles, shoots, or passes 10 steps ahead, Holli lingers behind where there’s less chaos and noise and less chance of the ball smacking her in the face. I get it, but I’ve never liked it. But as Holli and her dad stood there telling me all this, the thought foremost in my mind was “have I done or said something that made them think I don’t want Holli to play?” After all, my grand advice up to then to Holli has been “Holli, you can’t be afraid of the ball” or “Holli, the ball isn’t going to hurt you.” Brilliant stuff.   

So, even though Holli is just in second grade, and even though basketball might be something she doesn’t give two shakes about years from now, and even though I couldn’t be more certain that great, great things await Holli in her future well beyond basketball, something about Holli telling me she was OK with sitting out hit me hard. It made me pissed at myself. It made me realize I was doing her a disservice, and that wasn’t OK.

Holli lit a fire in me I think I’ll always be grateful for. In that instant, I was determined to quit bringing my crap into these Saturday afternoons and to just be a flipping coach that does what good coaches are supposed to do: inspire, support, and build up kids. And that goes just playing a damn sport with a damn bouncing orange ball. It entails helping prepare them for everything they’re going to encounter. I really wanted Holli to just have fun, something she obviously wasn’t having if she was asking me to play less instead of more. Moreover, I really wanted to take ownership.

So, Holli and I talked alone about fear. About pain and how fleeting it is if you don’t give it control. About ignoring the little voice in our heads that tells us, “You can’t do this” or “You don’t measure up” or “Don’t even try.” I told her about things that scare me and how I push them back. We talked about it being OK to be frightened, but it’s not OK for that fright to define us or to paralyze us so that we quit or never even try. We talked about jumping out of planes, about cheerleading, and about all sorts of things we wanted to do that excited us but would never do if we listened to that little voice. We talked about the dragon inside us that we have to let out once in a while to wreak havoc. What Holli and I didn’t talk about was basketball. Not once. All cheesy, cliché stuff for sure, but I can’t remember a time when I felt as good about being a coach.

I have no idea how much of what we talked about resonated with Holli, but damn it she didn’t have the best practice and game in the two years she’s played. She still cowered at a few passes, but she caught more than she dropped. She got in the middle of the action on defense instead of staying out of harm’s way all by herself. She was a part of the game instead of a witness. I couldn’t have been more proud of the kid. That my daughter told me unsolicited afterward that “Holli did great today” only cemented that pride. And personally, at least temporarily, Holli made me focus on something bigger and better than myself. Anyone who says you can’t learn anything from kids isn’t listening.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about my team this year and Holli and fear and coaching and more stuff than I can count. One thing that keeps coming up though is the friends and acquaintances I have who have or who are also coaches. My dad was a coach. My uncles and aunts were, too. My cousins. My best friends. My co-workers. My classmates. And so on. I think at the core, the good ones I’ve known all shared something in common—a greater concern for the kids’ well-being than for their own. It's pretty damn nice, though, when the well-being of both parties benefits from the relationship.