The Basketball Game

I am terrible at basketball. You can imagine, then, how shocked I was when Kelly, another teacher, came up to me and asked me if I would coach the grade 7 basketball team. I gave him every excuse I could, but when he said that the kids couldn’t play without a coach and I was the last resort, I gave in.

We actually won our first game. I had no idea of what I was doing. I freely rotated the players in. Sometimes they played guard, then the next shift they might be a forward. A tall student, who was in our school for only a month, made the difference. My team came off the floor elated. That was soon to change the next week.

Our next game was against Tomahawk, a fitting name for the school, because they chopped us into pieces. The final score – it is still burned into my memory – was 62-13. Their attack was so fierce and our defence so weak, the surprise is that we had time to score 13 points. As we limped back to our cars to take us home, I had to walk through the opposition’s dressing room. They were laughing at us.

When I got into the car with some of my players, I was upset. The parent, who was also the guidance counsellor at the local high school, sensed that something was wrong and asked. I told him very firmly that I had heard the other team laugh at us and we were going to beat them the next time. He said something about setting realistic expectations for the children and I retorted that nobody laughs at our efforts without a strong reply.

We practised for the next couple of weeks. Actually, my knowledge of basketball was so feeble, we just played a scrub game among ourselves.

As the big game approached, I suddenly got an idea. One of the Tomahawk players was really short. All of the others hovered over my players. If we forced the short player to bring the ball up the court, he would have to pass it into the key over my players’ outstretched hands to his comrades, something that would be difficult to do compared with the open spaces at the other end. Would it work? I had no idea.

At our final practice before the game, I decided to see what my players thought. I outlined the plan and expressed my confidence in it, and then I asked, “What do you think? Do you think it will work?” Immediately I saw 8 minds digesting what I had said and coming to their own conclusions. The answer was that they figured it would work.

I did one other thing. We had no uniforms. My players looked like a garment table at a bargain-basement store. I robbed the student council of some t-shirts and gave them to the kids. They were pleased that they now all looked the same. They were a team.

We went into the game with our battle plan memorized. If one of the taller Tomahawk players got the ball in their end, we would swarm him and any other player he passed it to until it was passed to the short kid. Then, we would let him bring the ball up the court and try to pass it into the key, the area where most baskets are made, at least, at this age level.

It worked! Time after time, we blocked passes that just didn’t go high enough to pass over our outstretched arms. At the end of the game, the score was 16-16. We had to go into overtime. I called my players over to give them a pep talk. They gave me one. One of them said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Stevens, we’re going to win this game.” And they did just that.

When the game was over, several teachers told me that we had just done something very special. I knew. I could see it written all over my players’ faces. They had learned that you could overcome obstacles in life, no matter how impossible they may seem.

I wasn’t content. I knew that I wasn’t a great basketball coach. I wanted to know why it worked. Here is the best I can figure.

1. I didn’t let the words of the parent discourage me. Right from the beginning, I knew my goal and I stuck to it.
2. I created a plan. This seems simple, but if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
3. I didn’t just give the plan to my players, but I asked them to make it their plan. Put another way, it became their vision, not just something that was mine.
4. I did something that made them feel like a team when I gave them the t-shirts.
5. I let them have fun conquering the other team. It was more important that they believed themselves that they could do it that my believing.

We played Tomahawk one more time that year. It was the regional tournament. While we kept the score respectful, we didn’t win. Quite simply, they were a better team on that day. Still, all of us had learned a valuable lesson that season from a basketball coach knew who nothing about the game.