Stanley "Skip" Jarocki was one of those people. I knew him from my four years at Watkinson School.
"Skip" was my high school basketball coach. He had been a star athlete at Haverford College in Pennsylvania where as the story goes,until he coached the Varsity Basketball Team at Watkinson,had never been associated with a losing team in his life.
Let me emphasize:UNTIL he coached the Varsity Basketball Team at Watkinson. Watkinson's Basketball team was a collection of wannabe and never-will-be players,and that's being generous. If not for the fact that Watkinson was a small school of 120 students,there were some on the team that would be hard pressed to make a third grade roster at other schools. My stint on the Varsity team was the result of a failed lesson in teaching a predominantly white student body that all blacks cannot play basketball.
Our team never won more than 4 games in a 15-20 game schedule during my entire 4 years on the Varsity team.
Coaching a losing team was not an easy task for Skip. His coaching style was hard nosed. I would compare him to noted Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight. He'd harass the refs and was prone to receiving technical fouls. He'd slam his clipboard onto the court. On one memorable occasion,after a 40 point loss,he smashed a can of soda pop against a locker,causing the can to puncture,the end result being soda sprayed all over his suit. Just like Bobby Knight,he did things that in today's world would be unacceptable such as clutching my throat following a series of errors by the team.
One would think given Jarocki's temperament and history that his memory at best would be a negative one. Truth is,the voice of Skip Jarocki sometimes still coaches me today. In playing for Watkinson,there was rarely a game where we didn't face adversity from the moment of the tip off. In many cases,for all practical purposes,the game was over within minutes of the first quarter. At that point,there would be players ready to quit and quitting was precisely what Skip Jarocki would not permit you to do unless you wanted a seat on the bench. It didn't matter if we were losing by 10,20 or 50 points..Lost a game by 73 points once..players played,quitters sat.
Sometimes life has been like the equivalent of losing by large margin with a hostile audience on one's case. Sometimes one "loses" but quitting is not an option and once we beat a previously undefeated team that had never faced adversity.
Skip Jarocki was also my English Teacher at Watkinson School and playing a game in the evening was no excuse for not finishing an assignment the next day in his classroom. He was known to pick on members of the team for answers,figuring that if we cant play basketball we were going to know our assignments. I once thought a snowstorm was going to cancel class and there was no need for me to study for an English exam. The snowstorm never materialized and Skip never hesitated in giving me a 0 for my efforts.
Given the description of Skip Jarocki on the basketball court and in the classroom,one might get the impression of a teacher,especially one teaching in a Connecticut prep school such as Watkinson as one leading a rather traditional and morbitly dull English class. Let me give you a partial list of required reading in Mr.Jarocki's classroom:
In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan
Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan
Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
The Greening of America by Charles Reich
Sometimes subversives come in the form of a Bobby Knight impersonator..
Watkinson School
