Why Sports Matter #1

Tis the Olympic Season

Like many of us, I often feel like I have to defend my punk alternative nation bona fides. Often times my motorcycle jacket, cigarette smoking, book store hanging friends make jokes about sports ball, or mocking things like the Super Bowl or whatever. I just sit quietly, and know, deep down, if I took some time and explained in detail Mcenroe’s run in 1984, or Bowdens 15 year run at the top of college football, or just how dominate Dan Gable was…I would not convince them of anything, I do not think. They might privately pull me aside and confess a secret love for whatever sport. But, for the most part, they would think I am insane. Lucky for me, I can exist in these disparate spaces. I can love Iggy Pop, and I can explain to you about what a big deal Dwayne McClains confession was. I can talk at great length about the Jesus Lizard significant in bridging two musical genres, and I can talk at length about how swimming transition from Janet Evans, to Summer Sanders, to Matt Biondi to Phelps, to Ledecky, and now to Summer McIntosh. I can do that.

But, here is the thing, I want to make it a little personal. Sports saved me. Very specifically, Bob Hinck and a key to the high school saved me. You see, I was a troubled 7th grader. I had serious academic and behavioral challenges, that sent me out of public school and into some horrific Lutheran School. In 7th grade I committed a horrible sin (at least I think so) and spent the whole year acting out, until the whole year was over for me. Then I got sent away.

Now, looking back, the psychology of this is pretty cool. At public school, I was confronted each day with my choice and the shame I felt about it. Probably still do. But when I got to the Lutheran school, I got to reinvent myself. I do not actually know how I knew to do it, but I knew I was going to be a different version of myself. This was the mid 80’s. I was just a kid, and had no real identity other than parachute pants and these pants with strings you tie by the ankles.

But, what I did have, was basketball. My childhood friend Chad, his father knew this guy.

That is Ken Anderson. The Hall of Fame basketball coach for the Eau Claire Bluegolds. Coach Anderson had a basketball camp in the summer, and some how my Dad and Chads Dad came together and started sending us there around 4th grade or so. So we would go to Eau Claire every summer for a week, and work with older coaches and players and try to get to be better. And it was fun. Each summer returning campers would get a gift for returning. The highest award was this jacket.

And I got one. After you got the jacket, you could come back for free. The thing being, it took like 5 years to get the jacket, and usually you were in high school by then, and probably doing other stuff. But, I got mine.

What was cool is the good hoops players at my school did not go to camp. Camp was sort of a city thing, and we lived in a sort of rural community, so it was not until 9th grade did I see a kid from my school. Chad stopped going one year before I did, and I even went with a kid from a cross town school before I went with anyone from my school. That kid was Matt, and that guy could go, I thought. But, when I saw the other kids on the East team, jesus, they looked like James Worthy. I do not know where they got their basketball, but I wanted it. It flowed, and it took huge chances, and it was verticle, and they would jump up and THEN find someone to pass to, or they would throw no look passes. The summer between 9 and 10, they changed my game, and my new game was not welcomed on the 10th grade team. They thought I was a dick, but I knew I was where they wanted to be, but I made them look bad, those guys.

But, back to Coach Hinck. So, my parents petitioned the public school to let me back in. And they did. My father was an athiest, almost resented the idea of God, so he was not sending me to a religious school. He hated the military even more, so the Military school was not a thing. So, I went back to public school.

In 9th grade they still had 2 teams. A and B. I had not really gotten as coordinated as some, so I was on the B team. That was cool with me, I got to play. It was Me, Dave Weber, Oz, Skvass, and Engstrom. Skvass was the talent. So he shot the whole time. Coach Simon was our Coach, and Coach Hinck was the A teams coach.

I was an outlier. Everyone knew me, everyone knew what I did, they knew I was gone, then I was back. I do not remember talking about it. One of the kids from the Lutheran School came to public school with me. He played hoops. It was the time of Dominque Wilkins, and it was the year Spud Webb won the slam dunk contest. And my girlfriend was Angie. Her best friend was with my friend Bill. And there was the Quicksilver Movie Incident which made me a hero in so many terrible ways (BID).

But, I was outside of everything. Punk rock and hip hop had set there hooks in Bill and I. We had skateboards. Football players hated us. Football players were the kings of the Castle. Today you would say I was bullied. Then you said I got the shit kicked out of me by jocks. Even though I was on three sports teams. I was still a skate punk, and all of the names that went with it in 1986-87.

Coach Hinck somehow picked up on it. Saw me struggling, and called my folks. He arranged for me to get a key to the school gym, and showed me how to turn on a light so I could shoot. I have no real idea of the how this was a thing, but it was another time. He said I could come and shoot when I wanted.

So, I did. I went to the gym, alone and shot hoops by myself. As an old man, I still know what a basketball feels like in my hands, what it feels like to dribble, what it feels like to square up and feel it come off your hands, and what it sounds like coming off different rims, and the pure joy of a swish.

I played thousands of games of one on one against imaginary players. I did rebounding drills alone. I did full practices alone. I ran suicides alone for fuck sake. And me and Coach Hinck never talked about it.

One day I cut off some sweats like I saw the African American college guys do at summer camp and showed up to practice with them. Hinck called me out in front of the whole team and said that is how hard you gotta work, you cannot care about the shorts, you just go with what you have even a cut off pair of sweats. I could not have felt cooler than that. In tenth grade, they all cut off sweats. And by tenth grade, punk rock had won in my soul.

But, I remember being a boy and getting out of school and hurrying to the Y to see the older guys play NOON BALL. I thought these were NBA guys, but they were Insurance salesman and car dealers who were still young enough to want to go. And they sounded cool. When 9th graders ran it made no real noise. But, 10 20 something ran, it sounded like basketball. Squeeks and slaps, and grunting, and exertion. They had man bodies, with hair, and violence, and pushing. And when they stopped playing, they were HAPPY. Slapping five, embracing, laughing and joking. Talking about stuff 9th graders do not know. But, what i knew was, they looked fucking happy. And if you play a sport now, you know what it is like to find that sort of happy. Your not playing for a school or a coach or a crowd. You and your friends, and competing, and afterwards you are sweaty friends. And you go get naked and soapy and then you go back to the soul crushing grind of sell Plymouth cars or home insurance. But, for those 75 minutes, you were away from that. Away from everything, running, shooting, doing the thing your body was made to do. Run around, jump up and down, throw things, catch things. Your heart beat faster. The chemicals that come with all that stuff, they came with all that stuff.

I still remember the ball handling routine we had to do in 10th grade at every practice.

Speaking of 10th grade, that is where another split happened. I made the team. There was only 1 team then, and cuts happened. My friend Bill got cut. I stayed and played for a couple of games. In a scrimmage against the school from Edgar I threw a bounce pass to Keith Kreuger on a fast break, and it was so amazingly perfect that I quit a few days later. I knew I was not getting in games anymore. I had been socially banished because I made a choice to play like the dudes from East, and our school was not about that. And I FUCKING KNEW that pass I threw to Keith was the fucking greatest thing ever. I knew I did it, and I knew I was done. So, I quit. And joined my friends intramural team (The Free Radicals, oh the science guys wanted to play). I never looked back.

I miss basketball. I am old enough now that I probably cannot find some guys my age, with the prescription meds I take hahahhaa, to play some five on five. The other part, I do not know 9 guys. But, every now and then I go shoot free throws before I swim. And I love it. And it touches me way way down deep. I am a 53 year old Walt Whitman looking guy doing the 9th grade ball handling drills in the gym at the Y. If I would not look foolish, I would run suicides. But, I would look fucking insane.

I do not love watch pro basketball. The money of it has destroyed the NBA for me. But, I watch Jayhawk hoops religiously. I watch womens hoops because Kelsey Plum and Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi and Stewie and Sabrina and Aja are so much poetry and deserving of my time and attention.

I think there is something magical in basketball. I was lucky to have a friend like Chad pull me into it when I was really little.