Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Season on the Brink

I’ve got to admit that it never occurred to me that being the head coach of a team would be this challenging. The saying is so true that the farther away one is from the bench, the better the coach that he or she is. Until this year, I always thought that I could easily mold a group of guys and make them into a championship-caliber team. Well, after one game in, I’m starting to realize that this is hard stuff. The first two weeks of practice were frustrating. I was having to deal with disciplinary issues every other day. Guys were cutting up in class, and our grades were suffering tremendously from the first nine weeks. If they didn’t make the grade by Dec. 15, I was going to have to replace close to five of the guys that I had originally chosen.

Study hall was a pain in the butt early on. I couldn’t get other teachers to help me tutor. I was trying to figure out a system to tutor 15 kids in about 4 different subjects. I was exhausted and frustrated. Then a huge blessing occurred. One of the English teachers that is also a close friend happily agreed to tutor my 5 seventh graders in Reading. This was a huge help. Then, I had the other 10 divided into 3 different study groups. Organization was occurring and we were starting to use our time wisely. Now as for the basketball part, the hardest task was to implement an atmosphere where defensive intensity and team enthusiasm were the pillars of every practice. This was and is still tough to do, because I only have two returning players on my team this year. The rest of the team is new, and they haven’t played with each other before. Therefore, we have a lot of undefined roles, and people don't know where they fit into our team’s system.

Slowly but surely though progress began to happen, and our team’s intensity started to elevate to the next level. I was finally starting to feel good about our chances of success. Then tragedy happened. Our team’s most talented scorer lost his brother in a shooting that occurred last weekend. It was horrifying. I’m going to leave out the details of his death out of respect for his family, but needless to say it was very appalling. He would not be with us for our first game of the year, and I can’t even imagine what he’s still going through mentally. Our team was going to have to step up to fill the void left. It also didn’t help matters that we were going to play the defending City Champs.

Fast forward to game-day, and the entire bus ride over I’m thinking over and over in my head about what areas we are weak in. I even woke up on three different occasions the night before, because I kept dreaming about our team not knowing where they were supposed to be on the press. The game was a sell-out, and the ticket office was actually turning kids away at the door. Let me go ahead and remind you that this is a middle school game. The opposing team’s pre-game routine was very intimidating with the school’s step team coming out to mid-court to lead the audience in a rousing rendition of "Crank That" by Soulja Boy. It was make or break time for our team.

I was nervous. That’s an understatement. I was incredibly nervous. But then something remarkable happened. The first half we did exactly what we set out to do. We pressed the daylights out of the other team and coasted into halftime with a 7-point lead. The lead should’ve been larger had it not been for some costly turnovers. We kicked their butt. I was pumped up. The second half we let up a little bit, and we ended up escaping with a 2-point victory. It was huge.

We had just taken down the City Champs without our best player. I couldn’t have been prouder. I also couldn’t have been more exhausted. When I got back to my house, I fell asleep in my sweaty dress clothes in a matter of minutes. Like I said earlier, I’m blown away about how difficult this job is. But I’m also blown away at how rewarding it is. I can’t recall the last time that I’ve been that excited about something. I was so proud of my guys for stepping up the way they did. I love them all so much. I’m telling you right now that if you can make it to a game this year, you need to be there. We can play.

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