Lessons from the Court

My High School basketball team from Watkinson School in Hartford Connecticut was terrible..and that's being nice about it. When I first entered Watkinson,I never imagined myself playing basketball on the Varsity level. Initially,my primary reason going out for basketball was to utterly destroy at this predominantly white prep school  the stereotype of all black guys being good at basketball.
But that's another story for another time.

We were short. I was the second tallest on my team one year. We were slow. In Basketball,being short and slow is a fatal condition and with the Watkinson Varsity Basketball team of the early '70's it proved itself with 20,30,and 50 point losses not being uncommon.

The coach of this hapless team was Stanley "Skip" Jarocki. He doubled up as an English teacher at the school. How that worked out as a student also is another story for another time. Skip was part of the Haverford College championship soccer team,and never had been associated with a losing team..till he met us.

Skip was a Bobby Knight type coach. Tough on the refs. Would get called for several technical fouls. Tough on his players too. In a game against Milford Academy we had 5 consecutive backcourt violations. On the sixth try,we got the ball past halfcourt. I then traveled. On the ensuing time out,I thought he was going to strangle the entire team. The image on his face is burned in my memory forever.
 "DANIELS!!"
There's something else from Coach Jarocki that has burned in the heart ever since. When one is getting beatdown time after time,it would be easy to call it quits,and given certain situations,it would have made sense. With this team,the outcome of the game was often decided within the first few minutes of the first quarter. By the fourth quarter,even the opposing team would be laughing at us. Nevertheless,the thing that got you benched in a hurry was NOT the mistakes,but rather giving up no matter how out of reach the game was.

There have been those moments in life when it would seem like I'd be down 10 points within the first few minutes of a game. Life can throw one for a loop at times. I'd hate it when Skip would bench me,and generally would not permit it from happening.
When times have been tough,I still see Skip's image and hear the voice..and I keep playing. Hard.

By the way,we did beat a previously undefeated team once..