b l o g o s

here's one

An April 1st never goes by when I don't 1) call my Mother, whose birthday is today--imagine all the pranks she endured as a kid, especially with her trickster younger brother!--and 2) flash on the worst April Fool's day I can remember.

It was 1990, twenty years ago now, and I was a college sophomore sitting in the stands with my teammates watching the women's national championship. Yes, watching. In the stands. On our home court in Knoxville. The nosebleed tickets and requirement that we attend were part of our coach's not-so-friendly way of reminding us that we hadn't managed to make it to the final four that year despite all predictions and expectations to the contrary (see this post about that loss's immediate aftermath). At the championship, we were both watching and being watched, so that we really had to pay attention to the game and couldn't seem to be having any fun at all. Not that we were. It was rather miserable to be there in street clothes and have another team in our locker room, on our floor, being cheered on by a crowd that would have been ours, and it would have been a capacity crowd had we made it. As if living in the (im)perfect tense weren't enough, Regina had to go and bring on some devastating future-tensed news at half time.

She was transferring.

We are talking about my very best friend here. The one who informed me on move-in day that it wasn't cool to wear flat dress shoes, even if you're as tall as me. The one who I immediately liked a ton. We shared a room on every road trip, having received special dispensation from the policy that we had to share around, because our teammates were tired of her silliness and my sloppiness. Regina, "RG" as she was known to the team and to our fans, and I were inseparable. Only Regina was bold enough to bop Pat on the head with a wadded up pair of dirty socks on the bus, and only Regina, in doing so, could draw laughter and a head shake from Coach Summitt. Regina, who would pose with me Hans-and-Franz style in our sports bras and shorts in front of the big orange-framed locker-room mirror, to the squealy delight (and some amused eyerolls) of our teammates. Regina, who helped stage the gymnastics feat that would chip my tooth on Lisa Harrison's knee. Who, once forgetting she had already been in the game, removed her playing jersey thinking it was her shooting shirt as she was squat-running to the scoring table to check in. Who mouthed "I love you, Jeff" to the ESPN cameras when we were losing to Stanford, and then became horror-stricken when I told her the coaches would use that as the game tape. Who, when she got to meet Michael Jordan at half time of an exhibition game, skipped the protective barrier and locked her arms around his waist, nuzzling her cheek just below his sternum and refusing to let go until Jordan politely informed her that he was "all sweaty," and gently pried her off of him. Regina, who would go through a pitcher of lemonade at road restaurants before our food would come and would inform the waitress before she even poured the first glass that she "might as well bring another." She was the center of the "eat-em-up crew," a nickname given to the five freshmen the previous year because we all ate with such, well, gusto. Regina, who brought life to our team, was leaving, as were many of our teammates following that turbulent season, including our teammate also named Debbie whom we adored, and whose departure would leave the "freshman five" as four before two years were done. But Regina was to make it a stumpy, lifeless three, and I was devastated.

She explained to me how the coach from Michigan State had gotten in touch with her, and how that had been her "other" school when she was being recruited--the path not taken, we all had these--and how the coach had asked her to think about coming back home, and how she had thought about it, and would ultimately do it. She would be a superstar there, I knew it. And I understood her decision, on the surface. But I was already mourning. She looked away, and I knew she was crying, so I looked back at the game which had just resumed, a wet blur of non-orange.

And then, making sure that we weren't being watched by the coaching staff, Regina came in for a sideways hug. I started to heave a little, and she got really close to my ear and whispered,

"April Fool's."

now this is more like news

As opposed to that story. Here we have Mark Titus, a bench rider who walked on to a great team and made a name for himself through blogging. Of course this story charmed me. In fact, reading this story about Titus's antics--how he begged the managers for water when a time-out was called right as he was to be put into the game; how he reminded his coach before the tip-off of the 2007 championship game that he had "five fouls to give"--totally reminds me of me and my teammate/college bff RG. Like Titus, we put in lots of time on the bench (though neither of us had that many trillion-games, because we tended to go for it whenever we got put in the game, and somehow I always managed to get fouled and hit my free throws). RG and I were both on scholarship and sometimes (though rarely) started, mostly when Pat was mad at someone, whereas Titus is a walk on and doesn't seem likely to start.

But like Titus, we were very much what they call "role players," and we had very similar senses of humor--in the high-pressure situation of such a successful team, someone needs to lighten things up. Like the time we mimicked the coaches' athletic-tape labels that told them where to sit after a time-out by putting our own on our preferred bench seats. (One of the assistant coaches made us take them off before Pat saw, but she was laughing and laughing as she did.) Or like the time during a really tight game at Stanford when the ESPN camera panned the bench no doubt looking to display our somber faces and instead RG mouthed "I love you" to her fiance. We were good for a little comic relief, which OSU's coach obviously recognizes the value of (and so did ours).

And we had our fans. I think it might be a cultish thing for devoted fans to begin to root for the non-starters. RG's held up two signs, one that said "R" and one that said "G," and mine held up two as well, one that said "HAW" and one that said "HEE." (Only once did they get mine mixed up.) Then there was the developmentally disabled woman with a little sports-fan crush on me named Carol, whose season ticket was RIGHT behind our bench. She would wait until all the noise died down and yell "Hey Pat! Put Hawhee in!" Sometimes Pat thought it was funny, but sometimes, understandably, it bugged her, and I had to motion to Carol to cut it out. That often made her worse. For the most part, it was objectively funny, though I'm pretty sure Carol's persistence did nothing to help my playing time. 

Neither RG nor I was as well known as Titus to the opposing teams, though. I'm pretty sure had blogging existed when we played one of us would have wanted to have a blog. What's not clear is whether we would have been allowed. But as with Titus's blog, there would have been a whole lot to say.

this story really bugged me

Was anyone else bothered by this story in today's New York Times, the one that focuses on a rich white kid who is obsessed with--and pretty good at--basketball? As I was reading it, I simply couldn't figure out what the hook was: that he's rich? white? kinda short? Yes, it's impressive that he plays through pain, but so many high school athletes do this that it's not that impressive. Is it that he quit skiing in order to protect himself from injuries? Please. That his dad manages and subsidizes (heavily, it sounds like) his AAU team? Well, that's a little more of a story, but this item treats it rather nonchalantly.

It sounds to me as if the only thing that begins to distinguish this kid from all the scrappers out there is his family's relative wealth. My cynical side makes me think he has some connex to someone at the Times. Because now, the only thing that sets Len Chenfeld apart from the thousands of kids like him, kids with big (though tempered and seemingly realistic) hoops dreams, is this multi-column news spread.

so excited

Joshie just posted a video link over at FB to the Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited" from 1982 (sorry I can't embed it), which has meant the tumbling in of some serious high school memories. As my sister can tell you, this was the song I listened to over and over (and over) before every one of my high school games on my walkman or car tape player (depending on whether the game was home or away). My focus song.

In watching the video just now, I realized that while the video renders it as the ultimate going out song, for me the song conjures the long treks to away games, the back of a bus seat in front of me, missing chunks of black rubber, my teammates (like me) wrapped--rapt?--in headphones, my cheerleader friends chattering and shimmering.

Before every one of our games, no matter how important, I was super nervous and keyed-up, and this song helped me to re-interpret those autonomic responses--heart racing, mind darting, sweating--as sheer exuberance rather than fear. This song is largely why I associate the high school portion of my career with utter positivity and happiness (even though objectively I know there was lots of pain and suffering). At some point, my team started running out to this song--in a layup line--and the exuberance spread through the bleachers. I hadn't realized that the song was at that point 5 or 6 or 7 years old. Its liveliness endures; it makes me want to pull on short polyester shorts, long stripey socks, string up my hi-tops and do some passing drills and figure eights with old friends.

dear promoters of Illini women's basketball:

I am not a devoted fan, though sometimes I feel like I should or could be given my basketball past. I did however score some of those free tickets to the game yesterday vs. Minnesota, and I have a thing or two to say. Okay, just one. I think you all are making too big of a deal about Jenna Smith. Yeah, I know she made honorable mention All-American last year, and maybe it's because I played on a team that had an All American every year--sometimes two. But by *only* and always spotlighting this one player, you are hurting this team in more ways than you know, but in ways I will try to explain to you.

First off, the hype contributes to what is apparently the game plan to defeat Illinois: shut down Smith, and you notch a victory. Now it might be argued that this would be the game plan regardless, and it might, but if this year's recruiting class is in fact the second best in the country, then how about talking about the freshmen? I left the game not knowing who the first years were or even how many there were; instead, I can now tell anyone who cares that Jenna Smith likes to chew 6 different kinds of gum before games, and also that she prefers Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings (much to the dismay of Illini fans, in fact). If you are going to cultivate long-term fans, you have GOT to get people interested in watching players' careers as they develop, rather than always flaunting your one star player. Tennessee fans, by contrast, were so devoted that they became obsessed with the players who didn't start the game. They waved signs to put us in the game. They knew we could contribute, that we had to contribute for the team to be successful. At least four players were sent to the press conference after the game, usually at least one nonstarter. We were a team. Our All Americans were phenomenal, to be sure, but we made them better by scoring when we needed to.

Secondly (and relatedly), by always putting Smith in front of cameras, in the headlines, etc., you are ignoring some very good players who might be made better with a little more hype. For example, yesterday, number 21 had a phenomenal game. Her name is Macie Blinn, but I just had to look her up on the website to make sure that was her name. She kept the team in yesterday's game. Smith had a pretty crappy game actually (she needs to toughen up a little if you ask me), but Blinn did what she needed to do: got steals, made good passes, tore down rebounds, and scored 16 points. And I don't even think she started the game (though she did the second half). The first headline I saw, though, was that Smith scored 21 points. I'll bet she did! She shot like 80 times! This is not her fault, but rather how the offense is designed. And the hype machine.

Finally, if you emphasized some of the other players, Smith would be free to focus on her role on the team. My god, she has great mobility and really wonderful hands. I would love to feed her pass after pass--she catches everything. And she is only a junior. Luckily all the attention doesn't seem to be going to her head, yet. Don't force the issue, or worse, burn her out.

Hey! I just figured out that Blinn is one of those awesome freshmen. There we go. My point here is that this is a team. Not a beehive, not a monarchy. You would do Smith a favor if you pulled back and focused on some of her teammates. Give little kids a range of players to holler for; give devoted fans a sense of the talents of the other players, reasons to come back to games after a star has graduated. Jenna Smith--and the team--would be better for it.

sincerely,
debbie

career decisions

Yesterday's Times ran an article about the "coaching tree" of Pat Summitt--about the impressively high number of her former players who are helping to achieve what, really, was Summitt's aim all along: to raise the level of the women's game. That number, believe me, would be much higher if it weren't for the WNBA or european professional leagues. It's a terrific article, and the print version of the Times features an uncanny shot of one of Pat's many point guards, Kellie Jolly Harper, squatting and squinting, Summitt style, on the sidelines.

Reading this piece made me spiral back a couple of decades to my explicit decision not to go into coaching. The 1989-90 season was a particularly challenging one for Pat. We had some behavioral issues, the details of which escape me now, something to do with missed curfews or spending nights with boyfriends. We had some rifts on the team. One player was perceived as the "coach's pet," which can be devastating to team chemistry. My best friend Regina's unlucky eye twitch happened more times than ever that season (we lost every game before which her eye twitched). We played some pretty raggedy basketball that year, and we didn't make it to the Final Four, which as it happens, was being held on our home court (for more on that particular devastation, go here). Pat made us sit in the stands and watch every second of the 1990 final four. We watched as the Stanford point guard from Oak Ridge who had really wanted to play at Tennessee won her team a championship. The next week, Pat called us in one by one.

Regina and I waited for our meetings with trepidation--my stomach turns just writing about it. After those meetings our team numbers dwindled to 9 scholarship players; nearly a third of the team transferred or rotated elsewhere by mutual agreement. Apart from the fear heading in to the meeting, and the fact that I, like Regina, came out of mine okay (we both were team players with easy-going temperaments), I remember nothing.

At that point I wasn't planning on a coaching career--the pressure cooker that was my high school coach's job already made that option less than appealing--but around 1990 I decided there's no way I wanted to coach basketball for a living because I didn't want my livelihood to depend on the motivational levels or the mercurial temperaments of 18-to 22-year olds. Regina and I talked about this a lot, and we agreed that much as we loved basketball, it was not our future.

It's not that I don't like 18- to 22-year olds, I do. I ended up deciding to become a college professor after all. But there is a big difference in having one's job hinge on the win-loss record posted by a small handful of young adult women and having student evaluations of your performance as a teacher figure ever-so-slightly into promotions and raises. 1990 showed me that no matter how much talent you have recruited, or how hard you work to prepare your team, things still might not turn out well: players bicker, sulk, and rebel much as they hesitate, slough, and miss. Students may do these things too (especially sulk and slough), but one need only wait out the semester, and there's a fresh batch of faces the next term.  Personality management, it seemed to me, had to be one of the most frustrating parts of coaching. Pat--and all those former players who are now coaches--have far more patience than I would, and I admire them for it.

1990 was also, as it happens, the year I changed my major to English. That summer, I fulfilled my major's Shakespeare requirement, and one of my teammates taunted me by swiping my Riverside and coloring in Shakespeare's eyes with red pen.  

gr8!

Last night Tennessee won its eighth--8th!--national championship. Their full-court press was nothing short of heroic.

the gear

This NCAA commercial, which features people who are presumably former student athletes in their professional garb, makes me and JM giggle. This is because if I were in it, I would be wearing pajama pants, a ratty tee shirt, and no shoes.

grounds i used to stomp

In a span of about 20 hours, I have visited the two places on the University of Tennessee campus in which, with the possible exception of my dorm rooms, I spent the most time as an undergraduate: Thompson-Boling Arena, where the basketball happens, and McClung Tower, where the rhetoric and literature (and all the humanities, for that matter) happen. Last night we went to the women's game against Arkansas, and this afternoon I did a little talk on my research in my old department.

Both the arena and the central part of campus have undergone significant changes: the arena has all new seats, and a main thoroughfare that runs by McClung tower got transformed into a pedestrian-only walkway. At the game last night, I recognized several of the media and facilities staffers working on the main floor, and half the coaching staff  remains the same, with Holly Warlick and Pat Summitt still going strong. Today, I recognized some of my old professors in and around McClung and chatted with them briefly.

This seemed to be the obverse of so many other places I know where the people come and go while the structures go on unchanged. And yet somehow the continuities are as reassuring as the new seats and bricks are lovely.

memories in teeth

An elbow, a knee, a bagel. These are what spun through the backs of my eyelids, squeezed tight at the bright noise of dental drills and grinders (yes, grinders). Tooth number 8 (right front) took the elbow and, later, the bagel.

The elbow was courtesy of a player at Erwin High School--or was it Mountain City? (they're rather close if I recall)--a tall player with big eighties hair. I think she resembled the character Glory from Season Five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and her elbow flung me about as far across the floor. But things are a little fuzzy up to the point where I was screaming and rolling. The scream definitely got more deathy when I spit out half my tooth, and I was a little embarrassed later about how loudly I screamed. But it fucking hurt.

Tooth number 10 (two left of 8) took a knee in college. If that sounds odd in a basketball situation, that's because it wasn't a basketball situation exactly. For some reason my teammates and I thought we could be gymnasts in our spare time--spare meaning the few minutes between class and practice, when we usually goofed off in the locker room. That day's goofing was more elaborate than the usual dashing off of letters or flipping of channels or playing of tapes. A few of us decided Lisa Harrison would achieve an assisted back-flip. So someone--I forget who--got on her hands and knees, and  as the assist person, I was supposed to help flip over her legs. Gymnasts don't need this, but that's probably because none of their legs are nearly as long. Lisa came tumbling in and I leaned my head in along with my spotting arms. Her knee caught me on the jaw mid-flip, and my lower tooth chipped the upper tooth, #10. I never got it fixed because I liked how it looked.

Ten years after the elbow, #8's bond came off in a big chewy Irving's bagel right before I was to teach my second or third class ever as a new TA. I thought I would just write on the board the whole class, or stare at my students unsmiling, but the humor of the situation won out, and when I finally exposed my half-tooth the three hockey players in the class developed an instant, collective crush on their TA.

And so today, numbers 8 and 10 got "updated" to the tune of "Make a Wish, Baby" and about a dozen other equally forgettable songs.