My Varsity guys played their first game tonight and ended up winning in a thriller by three. The reality of it is that we probably could have crushed the team we played - they were all only freshmen, representing a charter school that is just beginning its high school phase. We built something like a 17-point lead at one time, and the guys really did play well overall. But there are such subtleties to coaching that the average person may not really understand.
First, there is the fine line between developing a player's confidence and keeping him in check. There is a continual swing from praise to criticism, and there must be a balance of both. My guys have become very confident in themselves as they tiptoe along the precipice of cockiness, but this is how boys often operate. Coaching girls is an incredibly different dynamic. It's not to say that girls can't handle a little harshness from their coach, but as someone I worked with at my very first teaching job said, "You have to build girls up and break boys down." This is pretty true overall.
I work to help my boys believe in their abilities because as any coach or athlete knows you just won't get very far if you completely lack confidence. On the other hand, as they begin to struggle to fit their heads through the door, I make sure they are reminded of their fallibility. I work hard to keep their heads up but their feet on the ground. I think thus far we are doing well in that regard. The team chemistry is really tight and I do sometimes allow one of my guys' egos to stay just a bit inflated before finding the proverbial pin to pop the balloon. I hope they understand that there is definitely a time for confidence but there is also a time for humility. In life, if one can balance those things well, success is sure to come.
Second, there is a fine line between being a total dickhead and being a purist in terms of being a good sport. Prior to the game when I was setting it up, the dean of students, who I think is an assistant coach as well, told me that the kids were all just freshmen since they were just getting the high school underway. I took that under advisement and figured that I'd make sure to feel the flow of the game before allowing us to either obliterate the poor kids or to slip up and let the game get away from us. I've never been one to find it validating to beat some team by more than 30 points. Sometimes, even when you sit back in a zone and take your time cycling through your offense quite a bit, you still win by 30. Anyone who knows the game of basketball well enough can tell when someone's running up the score and when someone lets their third string play a lot of minutes.
I moved several of my JV guys up to get experience for next year since I have lots of seniors, so adding them to the mix means I have about 20-21 guys right now. That's a lot, but I have to have some backups in case we have grade debacles again. I managed to play every single guy tonight (I had 17 eligible and suited up), and I tried to divide the time relatively equally. Sometime late in the third and early into the fourth quarter we began to lose the lead we'd built. I watched my 3rd group struggle, and then my fourth group was having a hard time stopping the bleeding.
I stood there feeling like as the coach I was making poor decisions in terms of personnel or calling that pivotal momentum-stopping timeout. But the other part of me needed the guys to learn how to stay composed and dig out of it. My kids have the tools and the skills to do well in this game we call basketball. We are going to play close games and we need to find out up front what we are made of. My attempts to be the kinder, gentler, more sportsmanlike coach were about to blow up in my face so I did make the necessary personnel adjustments, plus a quick defensive tweak, to make sure we took the game back. And my kids did exactly what I hoped for. Down by two, one of my most energetic, upbeat seniors hit a key 3 to put us up by one. We locked up on defense (we've dubbed our defense 'Alcatraz') and kept them from scoring again. Shortly thereafter, they had to foul their way into the one-and-one to try to have a chance to stop the clock and get a shot off. My senior captain stepped to the line. I had hoped that my example of a game my JV lost by 8 when they had missed 14 free throws resonated. I hoped that all the free throws with sprints on the line had built into him a sense of urgency when it came to free throws yet the calm to step up and just do the job. He hit both of the free throws to put us up by three and we killed the remaining 8 seconds by stifling them on D to win the game.
In the end, the little life we lived inside that 32-minute game was saved. My boys saw that they could believe in the offense I've taught them, believe in the importance of tenacious D, and most importantly, they knew they could believe in each other and play as a team to win. I was probably most impressed with the way they stuck together throughout the game and even more so as it got really tight and tense. There was no more negativity when a teammate made a mistake, just comments that pertained to our offensive philosophy ("Don't just jack it up!") or pick-me-ups for their teammates. My top 10-12 players were absolute troopers hellbent on making sure that game didn't get away from us. I am just so stoked about how far we've come in such a short time. It's like night and day from last year to now. I also got a glimpse into which guys are the ones who thrive in the crucible, and that was a sight to see. We prepare to move forward; as one of the guys so maturely put it: "It was good that we had to do that now instead of win easily because it made us work harder and keep our minds right."
The other little interesting side note in this whole thing is that the dean of students who set the game up with us is a guy I had a horrible experience with last year. My school served as a host site for a charter school league here in exchange for getting our league fees waived. On Saturdays a middle school league played games at our school. I had not done the best job of communicating things to our school's Director of Operations during week 1 of the league playing there, so she, myself, and my principal decided it would be best to limit the number of people in the building for week 2 until we scheduled out the extra security for the rest of the games. I sent this decision along to the two league heads who of course did not pass this on to the coaches of these schools.
Come Saturday, no one was made aware of the "players and coaches" only policy and I found myself hemorrhaging in a shark tank. Angry parents got in my face while the league head threw me under the bus (he never admitted he received an email and didn't pass it along) then left the building. I was besieged in the lobby by parents, coaches, and ultimately, a couple of schools' principals as they were called to come rectify this serious injustice. Someone even called the councilman in that area to complain and he, in turn, called me about it later that week.
This particular gentleman who is now the dean of students at this school we played tonight was coaching the boys middle school team from the same school (the guys we played tonight, actually). He decided that the policy for this one day was so unfair that he was going to forfeit the game. Never mind that the other team was there and wanted to play. Never mind that it actually punished both his own kids and the other team's kids. He was going to show me, by golly! He said he was going to tell the other coaches then left. A few minutes later I went upstairs, asked the other coach if he'd been notified of the team's decision to forfeit, and he said no. I went back downstairs to try to do more damage control. As I waited, this dean of students guy was coming down the stairs. Because I was already frustrated, I admit I probably took a tone that could be construed a rude. I had made it clear to people non-stop that we wanted only the elevators to be used so we didn't have to worry about people in the stairwells as they passed the two floors that the other school in our building occupy.
He was coming down the stairs on his cell phone and I said something about him using the stairs; my disapproval was evident in my demeanor but as the Director of Athletics of the building that is gracious enough to provide a really sweet place for his kids to play, I think I'm entitled to assert myself and protect my building. He glares at me and tells the person on the phone, "Hold on, I'll call you right back. I have to go put this woman in her place." The way he said it made it one of the most demeaning things I've ever heard directed at me in my entire life. Just to have that attitude as a whole toward a woman is appalling, but for me to have to remain hidden in my female body, the one that belied my true self, really stung. It made who I had to walk around the world as all the more painful and embarrassing. Of course he has no clue this is happening, but I've never forgotten that moment. He got in my face and tried to act like he was giving me some life lesson. He talked down to me as if somehow he was this wisest man on earth and let me know what he was 31 years old and no one was going to tell him what to do.
There was so much about the situation both that day and the weekend prior that he had no clue about, yet he felt it was his right to talk to me like that. I guess he was incapable of imagining what it would be like if this were his beautiful new school and his impressive gym that has prompted some opposing kids to ask, "Are we playing at a college??" (It's not THAT sweet but it's flippin' sweet.) Even today, when I saw him come into my gym and went to speak to him face to face about our uniforms, he made some offhand remark about that, too. I'm sure he remembers me, and I have no clue what he may think of me now (I know I look markedly different), but I don't care what he thinks. I could stand there as my real self and be prepared to thwart his attacks. I deftly deflected his comments and went about my business. And here again, the fine line of coaching comes in...
I'll admit that I wanted to trounce his team right out the door by 40 points, and I'm pretty sure we could have if I really wanted my kids to. But the boys on the team are not at fault for his ignorance and abusiveness, and I've never liked coaches who use their athletic teams to perpetrate some sort of revenge on another adult. I wanted to stick it to that guy good, you know? But in the end, I know I'm a better person than that, so I did what I thought was fair and sportsmanlike. As I said to my kids, "I'm not worried that we're just going to narrowly win this game now - a W is a W." And so it is. They wanted to set up another game soon, and I think just to make sure there are no doubts, though, as to which team is far more superior at this junction, we're going to go ahead and win by at least 20. It's not about revenge, it's about allowing my kids to assert themselves as the truly better team on the floor at that time. For now, I'm just enjoying the afterglow of watching my guys rise to the occasion and stick together. They showed tons of poise and grit, and I think we're in for a helluva ride this season.
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